On May 22, an adjustment was made to the approval routing in Workday Expenses to include alternate approvers. This change means that Workday Expense now has the same sort of internal controls we had in Chrome River, which required two unique approvers for each expense report.
Now, cost centers with the same person in multiple roles may have more expense reports that route to an alternate approver. If an approver is the initiator of the expense report, the expense owner, or has previously approved the expense report, then the report will route to the alternate. This change will affect about 20% of expense reports.
Alternate Approvers are as follows:
- Expense Support Specialist
- Alternate: Cost Center Manager
- P2P Approver and Unit Gift Manager
- Alternate: Senior Department Finance Approver
- Grant Manager
- Alternate: Sponsored Programs Manager
- Project Budget Specialist
- Alternate: Project Budget Manager
- Senior Department Finance Approver
- Alternate: Senior Department Finance Approver’s manager
Here are some examples to illustrate the change in real life:
Example 1: John submits an expense report, and Sarah approves as the Expense Support Specialist for that Cost Center. If Sarah is also the P2P approver and there is no secondary approver in this role, then the expense report will route to the Senior Department Finance Approver for the second approval.
Example 2: Rachel submits an expense report with a grant worktag. If Rachel is also the Expense Support Specialist for the Cost Center, then the expense report will route to Carlos, who is the Cost Center Manager, for the first approval. For the second approval, the report will route to the Grant Manager as usual.
Example 3: William submits an expense report for a first-class airline ticket, which requires additional approval. Kelly approves as the Expense Support Specialist, and Alicia approves as the P2P approver. If Alicia is also the Senior Department Finance Approver and there is no other approver in this role, then the expense report will route to Alicia’s manager for the supplemental approval.
How you can prepare for this change:
- Review approvers in your area to ensure that each role is occupied by a unique individual.
- For example, the Expense Support Specialist should not also be the P2P Approver.
- Roles can be viewed in Workday by running report “View Assignable Roles” or in UBI.
- Roles can also be viewed by searching for your Cost Center and reviewing the Roles tab
- If roles need to be changed, please submit a System Access Request in Workday under the Menu.
Questions or concerns? Let us know at askfinance@virginia.edu
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This is an absolute mess for us. Early on, my Expense Reports were routing to my Dean's office for approval, since I am both Expense Support Specialist and P2P approver (I am the finance staff in my department). We added P2P role to a non-finance position here, just to keep routing within our department and to make sure only staff familiar with expenditures/appropriate worktags were approving our transactions. This ended up working well until yesterday. Now both our second P2P approver's expense reports and my expense reports route to our Dean's office for approval. All this does is add work for people who aren't familiar with the expenditures and don't know if worktags are correct. Why can't there be a dollar limit where one approver beyond the expense owner is sufficient? I can cut a PO up to $10K without additional approval, but I can't buy a pack of batteries with my T&E card without my expense report routing to two approves, one of whom doesn't know the correct worktags for my batteries anyway.
ReplyDeleteHi Cathy! As you know, this change was rolled back. But your comment is a good reminder for us that no matter what happens in the future, we'll need to update that process chart. Thanks for keeping that in mind!
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