Approving Documents

Every organization has its own established processes of document review and approval. For documents of specific types, more than one approval may be required. By enabling the Approval Workflow feature on the Enable/Disable Features (CS100000) form and setting up approval maps in MYOB Advanced, your organization can reduce the time required for document assignment and routing because the system provides automatic assignment for all the required approvals. Also, MYOB Advanced streamlines the approval workflow by providing a single form, Approvals (EP503010), that you can use as a starting point for all documents that require approval. For details, see Managing Assignment and Approval Maps.

Visibility Options

By using the Approvals (EP503010) form, you can perform approvals of documents of multiple types, including cash transactions, purchase orders, requisition requests, requisitions, expense claims, time cards, and equipment time cards.

By using the filter tabs on the form, you can view documents grouped in any of the following ways:

  • All documents that you can approve, including escalated documents assigned to users of workgroups that are at lower levels in the company tree but in the node of your workgroup
  • Documents that are assigned to you for approval
  • Documents that are assigned to the users of your workgroup
Tip: With some types of documents, such as expense claims or employee time cards, although you are allowed to approve documents assigned to other users of your workgroup, you may not be able to view the details of these documents on the corresponding entry forms because of the specifics of the document visibility settings effective on these forms.

Approval or Rejection of Documents

As an approver, you can either reject or approve a particular document. You can approve or reject all the documents listed on the Approvals (EP503010) form or only the documents you select. To approve particular documents, you need to select the unlabeled check box for each document and then click Approve.

If the approval map for a particular type of document is configured so that entering a reason is required to complete document approval or rejection, documents of this type cannot be approved or rejected on the Approvals form. In this case, approvers can use only the corresponding entry form to approve or reject documents of that type.

Note: If a document that requires multiple approvals is first approved by a member of a workgroup located above any of the assigned workgroups on the company tree, the document immediately becomes approved by the lower groups, regardless of whether those groups have actually performed their approvals.

If you reject a document, the system assigns the Rejected status to it. Rejected documents cannot be removed from the system; they are stored with the history of approvals. If your organization's policies allow the editing of rejected documents, users can modify the rejected documents. Any modification removes all approval records for the document, and the approval process can be started again from the lowest level.