Approval Management Workflow
TripLog’s Approval Management web component provides employees the ability to submit trips and/or expenses and supervisors the ability to review/approve/reject. From there, the accountants can schedule for pay. Email notifications, workflow status, notes, and out-of-the-office features are intuitive and simple to use. To turn on the component for the organization, the administrator should go to the web account > Manage > Settings and select Approval Management > Save Settings.
Note: Regardless of Permission set a user cannot approve their own records.
The features and business rules include:
Drivers will have the “Approval” or "Submission" menu option on the mobile apps, and the “Submit” and “Unsubmit” buttons on the web dashboard Trips page under Approval. Administrators/Managers will see “Approve” and “Reject” buttons. Accountants will also see “Schedule Pay” button in addition to all the other buttons. Go to web > Manage > User Settings to define user roles.
From the web dashboard Trips page, users can select any trips and attempt to submit, approve, reject, or schedule pay. The system will check the conditions and determine whether the operation can proceed or will be ignored with a notice given to the user.
Status Check. Only the status flows from one box to another depicted on the Approval Workflow chart are allowed.
Permission Check. Only the user who has the ownership or is a supervisor of the owner can operate on a particular data entry.
Once a trip is submitted, the driver cannot edit it. Unless it is rejected, then the user can edit and re-submit.
An email will be sent to the supervisor or the trip owner, and cc’ed to the requestor, stating the approval status has been changed.
A supervisor can set up the out-of-office start and end date on their web Profile page. In addition, they can set up an alternative approval delegate, instead of the default immediate supervisor.
When the immediate supervisor is out-of-office, the next supervisor up the chain, or the alternative approval delegate, will receive the email.
Supervisors can see a queue of submitted trips/expenses from their direct reports or their delegated direct reports on the web Dashboard page.
Only administrators can be assigned as someone’s supervisor. An admin cannot be his/her own supervisor.
If a supervisor is not assigned, a driver can still submit trips, thus changing the approval status, but no emails will be sent.
Through the TripLog web API, the back-office can also change approval status.