Approvals

[Rs536]

I am a delegate. My boss’s report has now, after 6 weeks, been approved and re-approved by 3 approvers after his approval. Every time someone wants to re-route he has to re-approve; the audit log is lengthy. This is for a report of under $500. Is there some way that our admin could be able to figure out these routing issues without us having to re-approve? He has approved probably 10 times. It is ludicrous.

[Munari_alEXPert]

dear @Rs536 

effectively for a 500 USD it seems a lot of approval requested, however a company can decide how best to have their approval flow. Based on your descriptions, I assume that the report wasn't getting rejected by the different managers, as otherwise will be normal that the approval process get longer and through more people.

What I would suggest, as it seems strange to me, it is to go to the expense report, select Details, sub-select Audit Trial. Copy the whole list of steps history which that report went through, and forward it to the Company System administrator or to who manage Concur within your organisation. Ask if those steps are normal or something need to be reviewed. 

[KevinD]

@Rs536 I'm trying to unpack all that you said. There are a couple things that aren't clear to me...

1. You said your boss' report was approved three times after his approval. I'm not sure on this because the system is designed to not allow someone to approve their own report. So, can you clarify this for me, please? 

2. Point 1 then leads to your boss reapproving when someone is re-routing. The system doesn't require an approval when someone reroutes and expense report.

I'm trying to get a clear picture of what is happening. Usually I would just go in and look at the expense report in question, but for some reason your site is not letting me in.

As a workaround, you could have the person that is your Expense Processor pull up the report from their processor queue and do the approvals. I think they can do that so it bypasses all the rerouting. 

[Rs536]

Hi Kevin—

Any time an approver doesn’t understand what to do, they return the report, though I am not sure what My manager or I are supposed to do differently. I asked for clarification a couple of weeks ago: 

Finance Dept Resp:

<<When a report is returned in Concur it is routed back to the Payee.  The Payee must resubmit the report into workflow.   Unfortunately, this is delivered Concur functionality which we are not able to modify. I am not sure why x has returned the report but the note in Concur states “This needs to be routed through y before it comes to me. Thank you.” When a report is returned in Concur it is routed back to the Payee.  The Payee must resubmit the report into workflow.   Unfortunately, this is delivered Concur functionality which we are not able to modify. I am not sure why Ms. x returned the report but the note in Concur states “ This needs to be routed through Y, before it comes to me. Thank you. Xx>>
***

The question remains WHY does something need to be returned to the payee if the issue has nothing to do with him? It appears that training may be needed? I’ve spent over a week “trouble shooting” this, for reasons that are not clear.

Glad to sent you the audit trail; I downloaded it last week. I will try your workaround to see what happens.

[KevinD]

@Rs536 it does sound like either some training needs to happen or a change to the workflow might be needed. If an approver is sending the report back and stating it needs to go to someone else before them, it sounds a little convoluted. How would the Payee know who to send it to? Everyone has an assigned default approver. This person is the first approver that receives the expense report (in most situations). 

Have you asked the Finance department about the approval workflow and what the hierarchy of approvals is and how the Payee is supposed to know where to route the report? 

Sounds like your boss routed the report to someone who then sent it back stating it needs to go to X approver. So your boss routed it to X, but they also returned it. Is that what happened?