Circular Reference Error in Bulk Import

[whae1]

We have just started to use Concur at our company and finally have a feed process setup with 1 remaining error. The error we have is  "BI Manager has a circular reference ". The issue is clear but the solution to the problem is not.... We have individual 1 reporting to individual 2, individual 2 reports to individual 3 and individual 3 reports back to individual 1.

The problem is that we indeed want to maintain this structure. Individual 1 in the above is an administrative assistant. individual 2 is the approver of individual 1 but reports to individual 3 who is a top level executive who in turn has their expenses approved by individual 1 who is the admin assistant.  

I have to think that others have run into this type of scenario. Any advice on how this works for others greatly appreciated.

[KevinD]

@whae1 BI Manager is used for Cognos reporting purposes. If you do not enter a BI Manager on a user's profile, then their Default expense approver will be their BI Manager. This might be what is happening. 

On the User Administration screen (where you pull up user profiles), do you actually have the BI Manager field visible? If so, check this field for the involved users. Since BI Managers do not approve expense reports, you can have any user that has approval authority entered into the BI Manager field. All this means is that if the BI Manager goes into Cognos, they would be able to see data from anyone they are assigned as the BI Manager. They will not be able to approve the expense reports for these people unless they were specifically assigned as the Default Expense Approver. 

So, on your import file, enter a different name into the BI Manager field for individual 3. If you yourself are also an Expense Approver, you could just enter your name as the BI Manager for Individual 3. This should break the circular error. You will not approve reports for Individual 3 in this case since the BI Manager permission is for Cognos reporting purposes only.

I hope this makes sense. Give it a try and let me know if it works.