Sparsely Populated Cost Object Approvers

[pcneef]

We are implementing cost object approvers for one or two departments that need to have a 3rd level of approval on an ongoing basis.  Therefore we do not want to count on the users to always remember to approve and forward expense reports.

So in our scenario we can populate a cost object approver for the desired departments, but we also need to populate it for all departments (the other 99%).  In most cases the cost object approver we define will be an admin or manager and get skipped since they would have already approved the expense report.  In others, however, we'd be unnecessarily be bringing in a third person into the mix.

Is there a value such as NULL that we can enter into the cost object approver field so that the workflow will know to just skip that record as if it was a repeat of a previous approver?

Please advise.

Thanks.

[KevinD · Accepted solution]

@pcneef to answer your question, I don't believe there is any Null option.

Now, maybe there is a workaround. You can add approval steps to a workflow. So, maybe consider not using the Cost Object Approval workflow since it only applies to a small portion of your company. Instead, you might be able to just add a step to the standard workflow and define the requirements of that additional approval step. I think you could build the condition to be if the user has selected either of the two departments, then that extra approval workflow comes into play. If not, then skip that step. I think that would be a lot less work. It doesn't seem like a good use of time to define cost object approvers for all departments when only one or two need the extra approval step.

Are you working with someone from SAP Concur on setting up the COA?