Fyle’s robust approval engine enables you to add another layer of approval for the expenses submitted by the employees in addition to their assigned primary approver.
As an admin you can assign secondary approvers to your employees and create approval rules to define the order in which report moves among your approvers.
Follow the steps below to set up secondary approvers for your organization.
Note, secondary approvers and approval engine are available to organization on business plan or enterprise plan.
Assign secondary approvers
Navigate to Admin Settings > Employees > Manage Employees.
Click on the employee that you want to assign a secondary approver to.
The employee form for the employee will open up. Under the Approver Details section, click on the dialog box under Secondary Approver 1 and select the secondary approver from the drop-down list. You can also add in another approver using the Secondary Approver 2 box.
Once all the details are filled in click on the Save button to save your changes. The secondary approver will be assigned to the employee.
Create an approval rule
Once you have assigned required secondary approvers to employees, you will have to create an approval rule to add secondary approvers to expenses created by that employee. Follow the steps below to create an approval rule for secondary approver.
Navigate to Admin Settings > Workflows > Approvals.
Click on Add rule.
The approval rule form will open up. Under approver, select Secondary Approver 1, if you have assigned secondary approver 1 for employees. You can also skip primary approver whenever this rule triggers. Click yes, if you want to skip primary approver.
Select conditions to trigger rule, whom this rule applies to and any additional action this rule takes.
If you require only certain types of expenses to go to the secondary approver, you can choose the type of expenses to be included using these sections in the approval rule form:
Select the category of expenses targeted by this rule (choose expenses inclusive/exclusive of a certain category).
Choose who is affected by this rule (choose which employees the rule applies to).
Set the rule conditions (any other expense details that the rule should trigger for).
If you require all expenses to go to the secondary approver, select rule trigger condition to Amount limit type > individual with Amount greater than $0.1
(Optional) You can set additional actions like flagging expense, capping amount or require additional reason for expense under rule actions.
Enter the rule description or click auto generate description to automatically create a one for you. Note: this description will be visible to employees in Policies and rules section and within expenses when a rule is triggered.
Click Save.
If you have assigned secondary approver 2 to your employees, you will have to create another approval rule for it by following the above mentioned steps.
Re-order approval rules
The order in which approvers see the report is determined on how the corresponding rules are stacked in the approvals section in workflows.
Let’s take an example:
You have created two new rules to add Secondary Approver 1 & Secondary Approver 2 to all expenses created by employees.
You see three approval rules under approvals section in workflows - one for primary approver, another one for secondary approver 1 and the last one for secondary approver 2.
On the left side of each approval rule, there’s a number and a downward arrow. This shows the sequence in which these approval rules will add approvers.
In this case, if an employee submits a report, it will follow the order Primary Approver → Secondary Approver 1 → Secondary Approver 2.
As an admin you can change the order in which approvers see the reports by simply re-ordering the approval rules. Follow the steps below to re-order approval rules.
Navigate to Admin Settings > Workflows > Approvals.
Click Re-order.
Drag and drop the approval rules to set them in order you want your approvers to see the report in.
Once done, verify the order and click Save.
Note: This action will re-run all policies and approval rules against unreported expenses within your organization. Depending on the number of such expenses, it may take 2-5 mins to for changes to reflect across your organization.
If you want more assistance with approval set-up, feel free to reach out to our team at [email protected]