Specific Approvals: Projects, Project-Related Documents, and Time Activities

If projects in your organization must be approved before they can be used to record project transactions and activities, you can easily configure the approval of projects in MYOB Acumatica. You can also set up the approval workflow for the following types of project-related documents: pro forma invoices, change orders, project quotes, cost projections, and progress worksheets.

Note: The Approval Workflow feature and features related to specific types of project-related documents may be subject to additional licensing; please consult the MYOB Acumatica sales policy for details.

Configuration of Approval for Projects and Project-Related Documents

To set up the approval functionality for projects and project-related documents, you perform the following general steps:

  1. You identify the employees who will be reviewing projects and project-related documents, and plan the workgroups that will include these employees. You also review your organization's hierarchy of workgroups on the Company Tree (EP204061) form, and add any new workgroups needed for approvals.
  2. You make sure that the Approval Workflow feature is enabled on the Enable/Disable Features (CS100000) form.
  3. You need to configure an approval map for each needed entity type (projects, pro forma invoices, change orders, project quotes, cost projections, and progress worksheets) by using the Approval Maps (EP205015) form, as described in Approval Configuration: Approval Maps.
  4. Optionally, if you plan to use notification templates to notify users about projects or project-related documents that require approval, you need to create the needed notification templates (from scratch or by modifying predefined templates) on the Email Templates (SM204003) form.
  5. To make approval required for projects and project-related documents, you specify the needed approval maps in the appropriate boxes of the Approval tab (Approval Settings section) of the Projects Preferences (PM101000) form. In the Pending Approval Notification section of the tab, you specify any needed notification template to be used for projects or the specific project-related documents.

Approval of Projects and Project-Related Documents

If approval of projects and project-related documents is configured, once a user takes a project or project-related document off hold, the system assigns this record the Pending Approval status and uses the rules defined by the approval map to assign the project or project-related document to a workgroup or to a particular employee (in the workgroup) for approval. If no assignment occurs, the project or project-related document is assigned the Active status.

Once the project or project-related document is assigned to a workgroup, any member of the workgroup can view the project or project-related document on the Approvals (EP503000) form and approve or reject it. If the project or project-related document is rejected, it is assigned the In Planning status.

An approved project or project-related document is assigned the Active status and becomes visible when users process project-related transactions.

Approval of Time Activities

To control the completion of time activities related to a project, you can assign the employee who will be responsible for approving these time activities.

Note: The approval of time activities is not configured in the same way as other types of approvals, by creating and assigning an approval map, thus no approval maps are needed.

An authorized approver of time activities can view the time activities assigned for approval on the Approve Time Activities (EP507000) form. The approver can apply a filter to the list of documents on this form to find specific time activities and then approve or reject them.

A time activity is assigned the Pending Approval status if the following conditions are met:

  • An approver has been assigned to the project task specified in this time activity.

    To assign the approver to a particular project task, you specify the employee ID for the project task in the Approver box on the Summary tab of the Project Tasks (PM302000) form. Alternatively, you can specify the employee ID of the approver in the Approver column in the row with this project task on the Tasks tab of the Projects (PM301000) form.

  • An approver has clicked the Complete button on the Activities (CR102000) form.

You can also specify an approver on the project level. To do this, you specify the employee ID of the approver in the Time Activity Approver box on the Summary tab of the Projects form. This employee will be assigned to approve time activities instead of the approver specified at the project task level. If no approver is specified at the project task level, time activities related to the project task will not require any approval (including the approval by the project-level approver).

If the same employee is typically assigned for approving particular projects, you can configure approvers to be assigned automatically for newly created projects and project tasks as follows:

  • For time activities related to projects that are created based on a particular project template: To configure this, you specify the employee ID of the approver in the Time Activity Approver box on the Summary tab of the Projects form.
  • For time activities related to project tasks created based on a common task (which is a typical task not associated with any particular project template): To configure this, for the common task, you specify the employee ID of the approver in the Approver box on the Summary tab of the Common Tasks (PM208030) form.
  • For time activities related to project tasks created based on a particular project template task: To configure this, for the project template task, you specify the employee ID of the approver in the Approver box on the Summary tab of the Project Template Tasks (PM208010) form.