Expense Report Multiple Approvers

[jdisney]

Is there the possibility of setting up the option in Concur where the National Directors of our company first review the expense report – and then push it up to Managing Director for final review and approval?

Thank you , Jeanne

[KevinD · Accepted solution]

@jdisney yes this is possible, but it isn't really a simple fix. 

First thing you need is to have full access to configuration settings in your site. The only way to get full access is by completing our Advanced Configuration training and passing the the exam. Have you done this? Do you know if anyone at your company has done this? If no one has, then you would need to submit a ticket to SAP Concur Support to have them change your workflow. 

If I may ask, how many National Directors do you have and how many Managing Directors? Are the Managing Directors higher up than National Directors? Also, does every expense report need to go to a National Director first then a Managing Director or only in certain cases or only certain employees need this?

I'm asking because there are ways to accomplish what you want without having to have your workflow changed. Although it sounds like a simple fix to just add a step to the workflow, there are a few other things to consider. For example, if not everyone needs both approvals, you need to assign those that do to an Employee Group that has this specific workflow assigned. All others who do not need both approvals, would be assigned to a different group. 

[KevinD · Accepted solution]

@jdisney yes this is possible, but it isn't really a simple fix. 

First thing you need is to have full access to configuration settings in your site. The only way to get full access is by completing our Advanced Configuration training and passing the the exam. Have you done this? Do you know if anyone at your company has done this? If no one has, then you would need to submit a ticket to SAP Concur Support to have them change your workflow. 

If I may ask, how many National Directors do you have and how many Managing Directors? Are the Managing Directors higher up than National Directors? Also, does every expense report need to go to a National Director first then a Managing Director or only in certain cases or only certain employees need this?

I'm asking because there are ways to accomplish what you want without having to have your workflow changed. Although it sounds like a simple fix to just add a step to the workflow, there are a few other things to consider. For example, if not everyone needs both approvals, you need to assign those that do to an Employee Group that has this specific workflow assigned. All others who do not need both approvals, would be assigned to a different group. 

[jdisney]

Thank you Kevin for the information

No one in my company has done the Advanced Configuration training but I will look into it for myself.  I am the Administrator for Concur in my company.  

To answer your question there are only a select group of people who will have the National Directors approve their expense reports and then pass up to their Managing Director right now in this group there are 3 Nationals and 1 Managing (who is higher than National).  For all employees we have managers assigned to approve but one of the groups wants to have their expense reports checked by their Managing Director. 

[KevinD · Accepted solution]

@jdisney thank you for the information. 

To learn about our Advanced Config Training, send an email to: training@concur.com. Someone will get back to you.

As for the approvals, you don't have to change the workflow. What you could do is assign the small group of people a National Director as their default approver. Then each of those National Directors can use the Approve & Forward option. This allows them to approve the report then choose the next person to approve. All they need to do is choose the Managing Director. This will take a lot less time to set up and will definitely be cheaper than taking the Advanced Config class.

Just throwing this suggestion out there. 🙂

[jdisney]

Great thank you for the information

[mtuck]

Hi Kevin. I have advanced configuration training and would like to know the steps to setup next level approvers in the workflow. I see an option to set a rule to assign to "default approver 2" would this be the setting? 

[KevinD]

@mtuck the default approver 2 option would work and might be the fastest way to set things up.

If you plan on having the workflow (approvals) simply be employee's direct manager approves then the manager's manager approvers, the default approver 2 would work and be pretty easy to set up. You would just need to make sure to assign all employees a 2nd default approver, which I believe we probably have an import file for this. 🙂

[mtuck]

Thanks! How would we view or verify that default approver 2 in the user's profile? Would the field become visible after the import? Also, would then we just add the step in the workflow and create the  rule for the specific expense type? 

Thanks again

[KevinD]

@mtuck if you add a workflow step that is to be carried out by the role Default Approver 2, then this field becomes visible on the user profile screen. This must be done first, then you can use the import to assign default approver 2.