Costs Approvals

Setup an automated approval flow for your business purchases, ensuring your transactions are efficiently verified and approved based on criteria you have pre-defined.

The best way to get the most out of Approvals is in the enhanced Dext experience, we recommend switching to the enhanced experience if you haven’t already. Admins can then set up an approval workflow in business settings.

If you want to continue to use the old Dext experience, you can access Approvals via ‘My Profile’ then ‘Approval Settings’.

• Take a Tour of Approvals
• Roles & Permissions
• Creating Approval Workflows
• Workflow Priority
• Editing a Workflow
• Removing an Approval Workflow
• Reviewing Items for Approval
• Managing Notifications

Tour of Approvals

Roles & Permissions

Admin users: have full permission to create and edit approval workflows

All other types of users: to create and edit approval workflows, all other types of users will need to have the ‘Manage other colleagues’ documents‘ toggle enabled, which is off by default.

Creating an Approval Workflow

Note: You must have an Admin role in Dext to configure approval workflows. See more about roles & permissions here.

To create an approval workflow:

1. Go to Business settings in the sidebar navigation, then Approvals

In the old Dext experience, you can access Approvals via My Profile, then Approval Settings

2. Click the Create workflow button

3. Enter a name for your workflow, and select the criteria you want an approval request to apply to. This can include:
   • Item type, document type, categories, suppliers, projects 1 and projects 2.
   • All criteria are selected by default until you start selecting specific criteria in the dropdowns. If you want to select all again, select ‘Clear selection’ in the dropdown.

4. Create your approver stages, and select who needs to provide approval and when

5. Choose whether you want to switch the workflow on after saving, and whether you want to enable auto-publish upon final approval

6. When ready, click Save workflow to complete the setup

Keep in mind:

• You can have up to 5 approval stages.
• At each stage you can select a manager, or one or more people who can provide approval. If one of those people approves the request, the others don’t have to.
• You can choose both admin, expense approver and basic users to approve requests. Approvals do not rely on users being the role of Expense `approver. 
• If you select Manager, the approval will automatically be sent to the submitter’s manager. If a manager hasn’t been set up, the submitter won’t be able to request approval. An admin has to set up the manager for them in My team.
• Each workflow is linear, meaning you create one approval route per workflow. 
• You can create up to 20 different workflows. 

Workflow Priority is Based on Specificity

When you have multiple approval workflows setup, the priority of which one will apply first is based on the specificity of a workflows rule criteria

Example:

• Workflow (A) is set to apply to all cost items across all suppliers with any value. The approver is Bob. 
• Workflow (B) is set to apply all cost documents across 2 specific supplier’s (eg Flora’s Florist and Karl’s Koffee) of any amount. The approver is Anita. 

If a cost item comes into Dext from Flora’s Florist, Workflow (B) will apply and the document will be sent to Anita. This is because workflow B is more specific than Workflow (A). If there are conflicts, a document will only ever apply to one approval workflow like this example. 

Tip:

• Consider creating a ‘catch all’ workflow, which will catch current and new suppliers, categories and projects.

Editing an Approval Workflow

To edit an existing approval workflow:

1. On the Approvals settings page, simply click the workflow you wish to edit

2. You can then change the the flow matching criteria and stage details, along with turning off auto-publish or the workflow itself 
3. Click Save workflow to save your changes.

Removing an Approval Workflow

To delete an existing approval workflow:

1. On the Approvals settings page, find and open the workflow you wish to delete
2. Click Delete workflow if you want to permanently remove the workflow entirely
3. If you want to temporarily pause a workflow, consider Switching the workflow off
4. Click Confirm to delete the workflow

What happens when a workflow is deleted?

• Any items that are currently in an approval workflow, will be returned to the submitters inbox.
• Already approved items will not be affected.

Reviewing Items for Approval

To review items that require approval:

1. When you have items awaiting approval, click the Approvals tab in the cost inbox
2. You can approve an item directly from the list, or by opening the item and clicking Approve
3. If you wish to reject an item you are reviewing, click Reject. A document that is rejected will be moved back to the submitters inbox.

Keep in mind

• If you’re an admin, you can see and perform actions (like Approve, Reject and Edit) on other people’s items that need approval.
• If you’re an expense approver, you can see and perform actions on items that need your approval. If the item doesn’t need your approval, you can see the item but not perform actions. 
• If you want users to only see their own items, make them a basic user. 

Managing Notifications

To choose when you want to be notified about approvals:

1. Open User settings, and head to Email notifications
2. Under Approval email notifications you can configure your desired preferences