This feature is currently only available as a closed beta.
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For some companies, the primary logic for determining the approval line of an expense is based on who the spender is. If this applies to you, read our guide here.
For others, approval is based on the reason for the expense. In this case, you need to route approvals to the person(s) responsible for the budget from which the expense will be taken. An employee might spend on multiple budgets. For instance, a consultant working on multiple projects may incur expenses that need to be paid from the relevant project’s budget. Similarly, a team member could incur expenses for various locations (e.g., restaurant branches, store locations, care homes).
To facilitate this, you can automatically route approval requests for Cards, Reimbursements, Purchase Requests, Card Transactions, or Invoices to the Manager of a Cost Centre or Cost Carrier based on the accounting field value entered by the spender at the time of submission.
How It Works
1. Assign Managers:
Assign Manager(s) to Cost Centres or Cost Carriers from "Settings" > "Accounting"> "Dimensions".
Notes:
Manager approval does not yet work for additional custom dimensions, only the standard two dimensions.
You can also view and configure Cost Centre and Cost Carrier managers from the User Management > Users table.
Only one manager can be assigned to each cost centre or cost carrier
2. Set Approvers:
Make the ‘Cost Centre Manager’ or ‘Cost Carrier Manager’ the approver in your policy.
3. Employee Guidance:
Advise employees on the fields they must fill in to ensure approval. Make these fields mandatory on forms for spenders where possible.
Notes:
You can make the cost centre or cost carrier field mandatory on Reimbursement forms and Card Transactions if you have the Accounting add-on included in your price plan.
Fields cannot yet be configured and made mandatory for Card Request, Purchase Request forms, or Invoices
If a user has been given a default cost centre, it will pre-populate the cost centre field for them, but they can still edit it.
If 1) no cost centre (or cost carrier) is allocated to the item when the request is submitted for approval and 2) it results in no approvers being resolved, then an admin will be sent the request instead.
4. Approval Requests:
Approval requests will be sent to the relevant cost centre or cost carrier manager.
Notes:
If an approval is requested for a cost centre or cost carrier without an active manager, the request will be routed to all admins with a message explaining the situation. However if there are other approvers in this step we do not escalate approval to an admin.
If the cost centre or cost carrier manager submits a request, they will be asked to approve their own spend. Our support team can configure your account to prevent this. In this case, Moss will send the request to the usual approver’s manager if available; if not, it will send it to an admin (but not the cost centre manager if they are also an admin).
If a reimbursement, card transaction, or invoice expense consists of multiple expenses or line items with different cost centres, each cost centre manager will receive a request. How many people are required to approve the request is dictated by the number selected on the “approvals needed” option in the approval policy builder.
If the cost centre manager is absent and delegated approvals are enabled, their substitute will receive the approval request.