Documentation › Applications common › Approvals and workflow

Approvals and workflow

Who has to agree before a document takes effect, and what happens when they do.

The authority ladder

Approval is decided by rank and by amount. A document routes to the lowest rank whose limit covers its value, and continues up the ladder only when a limit is exceeded. Approvers are resolved when the document is submitted, not when it was drafted.

Delegation

A person going away can delegate their approvals. The delegate acts with the delegator's authority for the period, which is what makes the delegation useful, and is also why it should be dated rather than left open.

Delegation grants rank, not entity access. Delegating to somebody who cannot see the entity a document belongs to leaves it stuck, because the delegate can hold the authority and still not open the record.

Rejection

A rejection carries its own reason, recorded separately from the note the requester wrote when submitting. Both are kept: the request and the decision are different statements by different people, and a later reader needs to tell them apart.

Status after approval

Approval and posting are separate events. A document can be fully approved and still sit in draft until it is released, because approval grants permission to post rather than performing the posting. Voiding a posted document reverses it in the ledger rather than deleting it.