Managing Assignment and Approval Maps

MYOB Advanced gives you the capability to automatically assign records (such as leads and cases) to employees for processing, to appropriately distribute work. When assigning a record to an employee, the system follows the rules and conditions specified in a previously created assignment map.

Also, if the Approval Workflow feature is enabled on the Enable/Disable Features (CS100000) form, you can use approval maps to assign documents (such as cash transactions, expense claims, time cards, and purchase orders) to authorized employees for approval.

Supported Types of Maps

MYOB Advanced supports various types of maps that may include any number of steps, rules, and conditions for assigning a record to a qualified employee for processing or for assigning a document to an authorized employee for approval. Each map has a type, which can be one of the following:

Assignment Map: Used for assigning business accounts, cases, contacts, email activities, leads, opportunities, purchase receipts, requests, or requisitions to owners for further processing.
Approval Map: Used for assigning approvers to projects or documents, such as bills and adjustments, employee time cards, equipment time cards, expense claims, expense receipts, projects, purchase orders, requests, requisitions, sales orders, or transactions.
Assignment and Approval Map: Used for either assigning entities to owners or assigning approvers to documents. Maps of this type were created in earlier versions of MYOB Advanced. This type remains supported by the system to avoid data loss.

By using the Add Approval Map or Add Assignment Map buttons on the form toolbar of the Assignment and Approval Maps (EP205500) form, you can start creating an approval or assignment map, which opens on a separate entry form.

Approval Maps

You can create a new map of the Approval type or modify an existing one by using the Approval Maps (EP205015) form.

An approval map consists of steps and rules. In the Steps pane, you can create any number of steps, each of which may include any number of rules. Steps may be executed in a sequential, parallel, or sequential-parallel fashion.

For each step, you need to select an action that should be performed if no approver has been assigned in accordance with the rules specified for this step, so the document becomes automatically approved or rejected or the next step (if any) gets executed. Also, you can specify whether a step is to be executed in any case or only if no approvers have been found at all previous steps.

For each rule, you specify conditions, which the system checks for the document, and actions to be performed if the conditions are met. As a result, multiple approvers may be assigned to one document. You can configure a rule so that after one approver approves the document, the system waits until other appointed approvers (if any) also approve the document, executes the next step in the approval map, or marks the document as approved. Also, you can specify for each rule whether an approver would have to enter a comment each time he or she approves or rejects a document of the particular type.

Note: If an approval map contains multiple rules and the rules are configured in such a way that the same approver could be assigned multiple times to approve one document, the system will create at most one approval request per document for this approver.

If a condition, step, or rule is no longer required in an approval map, you can temporarily deactivate it by clearing the Active check box in the settings of that condition, step, or rule on the Approval Maps form. A deactivated step or rule is marked with the (Inactive) prefix in the Steps pane.

Note: If you are creating rules for assigning documents for approval, documents that pass through the rules unassigned are considered in the system to be approved, so you don't necessarily have to create complete conditions. For example, in a small business, all documents with an amount greater than $1000 may need to be approved by the CEO. In this case, you would create rules to assign all documents with an amount that exceeds $1000 to a specific user (the CEO) for approval, while all other documents do not need to be assigned. The rules should be configured to assign only documents that have specific properties.

On the approval-related tab (labeled as Approval or Approvals) of a corresponding document entry form, all approvers assigned to the document are listed, and for each approver, additional information is displayed that helps track which approval map and which step and rule in this map is the reason this approver has been assigned.

Assignment Maps

Assignment maps are created and modified on the Assignment Maps (EP205010) form.

An assignment map may include any number of rules, which are executed sequentially. Similarly to a rule in an approval map, a rule in an assignment map includes conditions and actions to be performed if the conditions are met.

If you use assignment maps to distribute a particular type of record or document—for instance, to assign cases to different owners who will handle them—be sure to create a complete set of conditions so that no record or document of the specific type is left unassigned.

If a condition or rule is no longer required in an assignment map, you can temporarily deactivate it by clearing the Active check box in the settings of that condition or rule on the Assignment Maps form. A deactivated rule is marked with the (Inactive) prefix in the Rules pane.

Note: If conditions allow the same documents to be assigned to two or more groups, all assignments will be performed in the group that is positioned higher than the other groups in the assignment map, and the documents would never reach the other groups.

Map Application

In MYOB Advanced, you can specify an assignment or approval map for a particular type of record or document by using one of the following forms:

Time and Expenses Preferences (EP101000) for expense claims, expense receipts, employee time cards, and equipment time cards
Customer Management Preferences (CR101000) for leads, contacts, business accounts, opportunities, and cases
Sales Orders Preferences (SO101000) for sales orders of any type for which the Require Approval check box is selected on the Order Types (SO201000) form
Purchase Orders Preferences (PO101000) for purchase orders of any type
Purchase Requisitions Preferences (RQ101000) for purchase requests and requisitions
Projects Preferences (PM101000) for projects and project-related documents
Cash Management Preferences (CA101000) for cash transactions
Accounts Payable Preferences (AP101000) for AP documents
Accounts Receivable Preferences (AR101000) for AR documents

Users can assign such records as leads, contacts, business accounts, opportunities, and cases in bulk by using the appropriate mass-processing form, such as Assign Leads (CR503010) or Assign Cases (CR503210).

Map Execution Issues

Any issues that occur during the execution of an assignment or approval map are recorded in the MYOB Advanced trace log. You can open the trace log by clicking Help > Trace on the form title bar.

Document Approval

The appointed approvers can approve documents by using the Approvals (EP503010) form; only users authorized to approve documents should have access rights to this form. For more details, see Approving Documents.

Approval Notifications

In MYOB Advanced, you can set up approval notifications, by which an employee will receive an email notification each time a document requires approval from this employee.

To enable approval notifications for a particular type of document, you need to specify an approval map for this type of document on the appropriate form, which can be one of the following:

Time and Expenses Preferences (EP101000) form, General Settings tab, for expense claims, expense receipts, and time cards
Sales Orders Preferences (SO101000) form, Approval tab, for different types of sales orders
Projects Preferences (PM101000), Approval tab, for projects and project-related documents
Purchase Orders Preferences (PO101000) form, Approval tab, for different types of purchase orders
Purchase Requisitions Preferences (RQ101000) form, Approval tab, for requests and requisitions
Cash Management Preferences (CA101000) form, General tab, for cash transactions
Accounts Payable Preferences (AP101000) form, Approval tab, for bills, credit and debit adjustments, checks, quick checks, prepayment requests, and prepayments
Accounts Receivable Preferences (AR101000) form, Approval tab, for AR invoices, debit memos, credit memos, cash returns, and customer refunds

After you specify the approval map, on the same form, you need to specify the notification template that will be used for email notifications. You can create new templates or edit existing ones by using the Email Templates (SM204003) form.

For cash transactions, sales orders, purchase orders, requests, and requisitions, you also need to select the Require Approval check box on the preferences form of the respective module; otherwise, the approval stage will be skipped.