Exact Synergy Enterprise

Overview of hours and expenses to be approved or rejected

Menu path

Modules > Projects > Reports > Professional services automation > Hour & expense approval

Introduction

In the overview of hours and expenses to be approved, the project managers, line managers, or project hour approvers can approve or reject the hours and expenses of a person determined in the request. This is the same as the hours and expenses entered by a consultant that is displayed in the workflow of the project manager for realization.

The approval and rejection of hour and expense requests will differ depending on whether the Week timesheet feature is enabled or not. The Week timesheet feature is enabled if a request type is filled at the Week timesheet field at Modules > Projects > Reports > Professional services automation > Settings.

Roles and rights

Anyone can access the Hour & expense approval page.

To view the requests on this page, the security level of the person must be equal to or higher than the security level of the requests:

For requests that are marked private, they will not be displayed on this page if your name is not filled at the Person field. However, the hours from these requests will still be displayed in the Total approved column.
For Hour planning & realization (HPR), Travel expenses (TER), and Material & expenses (MER) requests, they will only be displayed on this page if they are of the Approved status.
For non-project hour requests, they will be displayed on this page if you are the approver. The Person field has to be defined in the request type definition, under the Flow tab.

To approve or reject hours on this page, function right 890 – Approve project hours & expenses is required. Users with the Project administration role have this function right. A line manager can approve or reject hours of only the subordinates.

In addition, the right to approve or reject the requests is dependent on the settings defined in the request type definition under the Who can realize the request? section.

For Hour planning & realization (HPR), Travel expenses (TER), and Material & expenses (MER) requests:

If Manager: Project is selected at Person, then you will be able to approve hours and expenses if they belong to the project for which you are the project manager.
If Manager: Person is selected at Person, then you will be able to approve hours and expenses submitted by your subordinates.
If a role is selected at Role, then you will be able to approve hours and expenses if you have a role that is linked to function right 890 — Approve project hours & expenses. This also depends on the level of the role that you are assigned with:

Project — You can approve requests for all projects of which you are a member.
Cost centre — You can approve requests only for projects that belong to your cost centres.
Cost centre group — You can approve requests only for projects that belong to your cost centre groups.
Division — You can approve requests only for projects that belong to your divisions.
Group — You can approve requests only for projects that belong to your division groups.
Corporate — You can approve requests for all projects that belong to your company.

For intercompany Hour planning & realization (HPR), Travel expenses (TER), and Material & expenses (MER) requests, you can approve hours and expenses if they belong to the project for which you are the project manager, and if your security level is higher than the security level of the item.

For non-project hour requests, only the Manager: Person setting can be defined. Hence, you can only approve non-project hour requests that are submitted by your subordinates.

Note:

For more details on function rights, go to Modules > System > Setup > Security > Function rights.
For more details on roles, go to Modules > System > Setup > Security > Roles.

What version are you using?

The information in this document is applicable to product update 502 and higher. If you have any versions lower than this, certain features explained here will not be available.

How do I approve selected hours individually?

On the Hour & expense approval page, define the search criteria.
Click Refresh.
Select the check box for the individual hours to be approved.
Click Approve.
Click Close.

How do I reject selected hours individually?

On the Hour & expense approval page, define the search criteria.
Click Refresh.
Select the check box for the individual hours to be rejected.
Click Reject.
Type in the reason for rejection on the Reason for rejection page.
Click Reject all.
Click Close.

How do I approve selected hours in bulk?

On the Hour & expense approval page, define the search criteria.
Click Refresh.
Select the To be approved check box to select all hour requests.
Click Approve.
Click Close.

How do I reject selected hours in bulk?

On the Hour & expense approval page, define the search criteria.
Click Refresh.
Select the To be approved check box to select all hour requests.
Click Reject.
Type in the reason for rejection on the Reason for rejection page.
Click Reject all.
Click Close.

Tips and tricks

Week timesheet feature

When the Week timesheet feature is enabled and a consultant submits any Hour planning & realization, non-project hours, Travel expenses, or Material & expenses requests, these requests will be linked to a Week timesheet request.

When the Week timesheet request has been created:

All linked hour and expense requests cannot be edited.
No new Hour planning & realization, non-project hours, Travel expenses, or Material & expenses can be added to the Week timesheet request.

The Week timesheet request will be directed to the project manager for approval or rejection. Once the Week timesheet request has been approved, it will be directed to the manager of the consultant for approval.

Note that only the following combinations are accepted when configuring the workflow routing for the week timesheet:

Person field under the ‘Who can approve the request’ section	Person field under the ‘Who can realize the request’ section
Manager: Project	Manager: Person
Manager: Person	Manager: Project
Unspecified	Manager: Project and Manager: Person

Also, when the Week timesheet feature is enabled:

Manager of the consultants are not able to approve Hour planning & realization requests on this page. They can only approve non-project hours requests.
Under the Details section, the name and job title of the person, and the ID of the Week timesheet request are displayed. You can click the hyperlink of the ID to view the request.
Approved requests will still be displayed on this page but are disabled. This allows the project managers to see how many hours in the timesheet that have been approved, and which have yet to be approved.

Requests that have been rejected will not be displayed on this page. All related requests in the same timesheet will not be displayed as well.

Buttons

Fields

Filters section

Grouping

Select an option to define the grouping of the requests on the Hour & expense approval page:

Per person — Select this option to group the requests at person level. This grouping displays the project hours and expenses, as well as non-project hours.
Per project — Select this option to group the requests at project level. This grouping displays only the project hours and expenses.

Note: You will only see this field if you are the manager of a project and have at least one subordinate who is a project member.

View

Select the date format in which to view requests:

Range — Select this option to view requests by a date range.
Week — Select this option to view requests by week.
Month — Select this option to display requests by month.

Note: This field will not be enabled and Week will be selected by default if the Week timesheet feature is enabled (a request type is filled at the Week timesheet field at Modules > Projects > Reports > Professional services automation > Settings).

Division

Type or select a division to view requests by division. By default, the division of the person who is logged in to Exact Synergy Enterprise will automatically be filled.

Cost centre

Type or select the cost centre to view requests for the selected cost centre.

Project manager

Type or select the project manager to view requests for projects managed by the selected project manager.

Project (incl. child projects)

Type or select the project to view requests for the selected project and its child projects.

Project type

Select the type of project that you want to approve. You can select Time & material, Internal, or Fixed price. When you select a project type, you will see the projects (including the child projects) that match the selected type. If you select both the project type and project, the results that match both the conditions will be shown.

There is no relationship between the Project type and Project fields. The project that you have selected at Project will not be based on the selection at Project type. For example, all the projects with different types will be listed in the Project browser even though you have selected Fixed price at the Project type field.

If you have selected the Per person option at Grouping, you will see the non-project hours request even if the project type is selected. However, if you selected the Per project option at Grouping, you will not see the non-project hours request.

Employee

Type or select the employment ID to display only the requests of the selected employee.

Line manager

Type or select the employment ID to display the requests of the selected employee's subordinates.

Table

Show To be realized column — Select this check box to display hours to be realized.
Show Total budgeted column — Select this check box to display budgeted hours under the Details section.

Note: The Show budgeted hours check box will be displayed if the Per project option is selected while the Show scheduled hours check box will be displayed if the Per person option is selected.

Details section

This section will display the list of hours and expenses to be approved based on the selection criteria. Click to drill down to view the list of hours to be approved. If the Week timesheet feature is enabled (a request type is filled at the Week timesheet field at Modules > Projects > Reports > Professional services automation > Settings), hours and expenses that have been approved will still be displayed on this page but will not be enabled. Only when all hours and expenses in the same timesheet have been approved, these requests will not be displayed on this page.

expand all

Click this to expand all the requests.

collapse all

Click this to hide all the requests.

To be approved

Select this check box to select the hours to be approved.

Page size

Type a number to define the number of projects to be displayed on a single page. Click Show to update the page size.