Expense Processor as 1st level approval

[AEM]

Dear Concur Community,

I hope all is well,

Can we have the expense processor as a 1st level approver and the manager as a 2nd approver? What would be the pros and cons of having such a workflow?

Best

Andrew El Marj

[KevinD · Accepted solution]

@AEM you absolutely can have the processor step first. Most people have the processor as the last approver since these people are usually in the Finance or Accounting department and have more authority when it comes to spending. To me, as long as both the manager and processor see the report, that should be sufficient. However, companies vary in their approval process so it really all depends on what your policies and processes are. 

[KevinD · Accepted solution]

@AEM you absolutely can have the processor step first. Most people have the processor as the last approver since these people are usually in the Finance or Accounting department and have more authority when it comes to spending. To me, as long as both the manager and processor see the report, that should be sufficient. However, companies vary in their approval process so it really all depends on what your policies and processes are. 

[DeanR · Accepted solution]

We have that set-up, and the main pro for us is that the Expense Processors pick up a lot of user errors and get the user to fix them before the report gets to the manager.  Examples can be expense policy violation (Processors are generally more in-tune with policies than managers), incorrect Expense Type, missing or incorrect receipts, etc.

It means the managers are only getting 'clean' reports to approve.  Previously they would have their time wasted reviewing the same report two or more times if the initial submission had errors. 

[athakar]

We have the same kind of set up except in our case all expense reports get approved by Project Managers. So we skipped the line managers approval step by selecting exemption option in the profile so that  the report goes to the Processor directly and then to the project manager for approver.  Hope this helps.

[Amandalangton]

We use this too for the same reasons. And we have another Processor step at the end that skips in most cases, but stops there if there are any exceptions of a certain level.

[gciao]

We also have this set up and find its very efficient to ensure receipts and proper coding are in place before the Manager spends time looking at the report.  Ideally we only want the Manager to review appropriateness of spend, not the Accounting nuances.