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Approval cycle

Save the approval cycles for expenses

Maria Tirkkonen avatar
Written by Maria Tirkkonen
Updated over 6 months ago

Approval cycles in Bezala are flexible and versatile. The approval cycles can be any of the following or a combination of them:

  • No approval cycles

  • User specific approval cycle

  • Cost center specific approval cycle

  • Company specific approval cycle

The approval cycle can include as many people as necessary. You can add hierarchy (THEN rule) between different approvers, which means they must approve the cost in a certain order. Another option is that approval is required from only selected people, and the order does not matter (OR rule).

For example, according to the approval cycle below, travel and expense reports would first go to Martha Jones and Amy Pond for approval. Once one of them has approved the cost, it will proceed to be checked by Rose Tyler.

After the cost has gone through the approval process, it will wait to be sent to accounting.

User specific approval cycle

When a user saves an expense in Bezala, the expense is automatically assigned to the user's approver. The user-specific approval cycle can be maintained manually or imported into Bezala via Netsuite, Mepco, or Severa integration.

Read more about how to manually update the approval round for a user.

Cost center specific approval cycle

The cost center specific approval cycle can also be set manually in Bezala or imported via Netsuite or Severa integration. If the company's dimensions are imported via SFTP, cost center-specific approval rounds can be updated at the same time. The approval cycle from the cost center overrides the user-specific approval cycle.

Read more about how to manually update the approval round for a cost center.

Transaction specific approval cycle

If necessary, an individual expense can have its own approval cycle. This approval cycle overrides both the user specific and cost center specific approval rounds.

A user with a supervisor role can change the approval cycle for an expense through the expense form's cog icon.

Users with "Public" or "Money checker" role are visible to users with the Employee role, from which they can select a new reviewer for their expense. "Approvers" are always the last approver in the approval rounds of expenses that have been manually changed through the gear icon.

Read more about how to manually update the expense-specific approval round.

Company approvers

In the company settings, a default approver can be assigned for the entire company. This approver is automatically assigned to travel and expense reports that do not have an approval cycle from elsewhere.

In the company settings, there are additional ways to enhance existing rounds. You can set "Approvers added before all other approval" or "Approvers added after all other approval"

Read more about company-level approvers here.

Chart of Bezala approver cycles

Stand-in approver

Bezala has a stand-in feature for users who are approvers. With this feature, no separate changes need to be made to the approval cycles during the approver's absence.

A user with only the Employee role can only assign users with the Public Approver role as a substitute due security reasons.

The set stand-in approver only substitutes for the approver's own position in the approval cycle, so the entire approval cycle is not replaced. Therefore, all approvers must have their own substitute for approval cycles with more than one approver.

For example, if there are two users in the approval cycle (users 1 and 2), user 1 sets a stand-in approver for themselves, and user 2 is also on vacation, both must set their own substitute.

Stand-in approver settings are company/association-specific. If a user acts as an approver in multiple Bezala environments, they must set a substitute for each environment separately.

Check here step by step guide on how to set stand-in approver

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