Overview:
Schemas are a grouping of Workflow rules that affect the nominated Document Type. Workflows must be enabled in Control Parameters before documents can be submitted to a Workflow. You can adjust each schema to affect the desired Entities, providing potential for detailed application across various areas of your company.
Workflows allow for a broad range of situations and processes, and while this guide cannot cover them all, it will go through how to build a Workflow for your company's needs.
- The Permissions “Workflow Reviewer” and “Workflow Approver” are useful for validating workflow functions. They are granted to global ‘General’ Role by default to limit disruption to Purchase Requisition workflows. Remove them from General if required for vouchers, but then they should be granted to the respective PR roles.
- The default workflow behaviour is to assign a reviewer or approver that is different to the prior step to avoid actioning by the same person.
- Voucher Credits are a separate Document Type and requires their own Workflow.
Screen Guide:
Workflow Schema List
The initial screen lists all existing Schemas. The Workflow Schema field serves as a link to open the editing window, or use the button to create a + New Workflow Schema.
Create/Edit Schema
We will use a Purchase Order Workflow for our example. Each section is detailed below:
Header:
The Header section is where we determine the Document Type, which can be one of the following:
- Job Budget
- Job Sales Invoice
- Purchase Order
- Purchase Requisition
- Sub Contract Claim
- Voucher
- Voucher Credit
- Work Order
Once you choose the Document Type, give the Workflow a Description. Workflow Type is an optional field that can be associated with this Workflow.
The Value Review Type gives the choice between the following:
- Multiple Value allows for a sequential review up to the document's value. The workflow would begin with the indicated user with the lowest review mandate, then once they review it, the document is passed to the user with the next highest review mandate until the value of the document has been reached. Remember, this only affects the review step and does not allow for multiple approvals.
- Single Value requires review from only the person with the minimum required mandate, and the option exists to select another person with a sufficient mandate.
Technical Review Type is used solely for Purchase Requisition Workflows and is used as a parallel review process outside of purely cost-related review such as Engineering, OH&S, etc. When selected, additional options appear:
It does not consider Authority Limits and will go through all the defined Technical Reviewers in the list to complete the review process. Technical Review is the first Review step in the process before it goes to the Value Review (if any defined in the Value Schema) and Approval (which is a mandatory step).
The Technical Review Group can be added to in Lookups under the "TechnicalReviewGroup" type. You can tick the box to make Technical Review Optional.
Steps Tab:
This tab is where you can enter the Workflow steps.
- Sequence is the numerical order that the steps should be completed.
- Review/Approval gives you the choice between whether the step should be a Review, Approval, or Unapproval step.
- Person allows you to nominate a particular User that should be doing the step.
- Function gives you more contextual options for the step. The options will change depending on the Document Type:
- Me – The user performing the previous action, i.e. Submit or Review
- PO Purchaser – The user listed as the purchaser of the PO
- PO Approver – The user who approved the PO
PO Purchaser if Unreceipted - If the PO is unreceipted or all receipted quantity has been vouchered then route to PO Purchaser, else go to the next WF step.
PO Entered By else Send Back - Route to the PO Entered By if valid else Send Back; but if PO Entered By has insufficient limit then go to next WF step.
- Job Manager - based on the job referenced in the first line of the document
- Job Account Manager - based on the job referenced in the first line of the document
- Subcontract Administrator - the user listed in Subcontract Settings as the administrator
All Voucher Users - Lists all people with a valid voucher limit, filtered by the first line Job Profit Centre. Note this function only works for Single Value workflow schema to support a manual allocation workflow.
- Derive Limit resets the Limit to 0 and derives the user's normal approval limit from their User's Settings, depending on the Document Type.
Additionally, voucher also supported review specific limits via the ‘AP Voucher Use Review Limits’ control parameter. This enables workflow review steps with Derive limits to refer to the ‘Voucher Reviewers Limit’ setting rather than the standard ‘AP invoice Approvers Limit’ setting. - Limit is the document's value limitation that the step can review or approve.
- Decline Allowed indicates that the user can reject the document, preventing it from being resubmitted (this should not be allowed unless the user has authority to do so - the option to Send Back is otherwise available).
Entities Tab:
This tab defines the criteria for the documents using this workflow. Criteria may be defined at Fin Co, Company, Profit Centre, Job Type, or Job level, and multiple criteria may be specified; e.g. a workflow could be applicable to jobs A, B, and C, or to two of four Profit Centres.
Workflow Process:
The image above is compiled to display the applicable buttons for illustrative purposes rather than what it would look like during normal use.
Assign
- The Assign is available prior to submission into the Workflow and allows for ad-hoc assignment, typically for coding of lines.
- The User settings ‘AP/AR/PO/Voucher Assigned Email’ determines if a notification email is sent to users with this setting.
Submit
- The Submit button begins the Workflow process for the document and places it into the applicable Workflow based on matching Entity and Workflow Type.
- Once submitted, there can be no deviation from the schema used.
Review
- Review is available to the assigned reviewer (or a Voucher Admin) and indicates the document has been reviewed by the user.
- This review process may be for coding of lines, ensuring receipt of goods, or as a preliminary approval step where more than one approval is required (a document can only have one final approval).
Send Back
- Send Back will return the document to the requester (the person who submitted to document), or in case of an auto submit, the requester as defined by the Setting "AP Voucher Auto Requester."
- The document may be re-submitted.
Decline
- Rejects the submission with a ‘Declined’ status, and the document is disabled from further updates.
- An email notification is sent to the requester, and the document may NOT be re-submitted.
Cancel
- Marks the submission with a ‘Cancelled’ status, and the voucher is disabled from further updates.
- An email notification is sent to the requester, and the document may NOT be re-submitted unless uncancelled.
Uncancel
- Uncancel reverts the voucher status to New and allows reprocessing of a document.
WFlow | Msg
- Displays a trail of the workflow progress.
- Also supports display of prior workflows if the document was re-submitted.
- It also allows ad-hoc messaging with an audit of previous messages sent in the Messages tab.
Next Steps:
Once you have set up a new Workflow, be sure to test it to ensure the steps progress as intended. Ensure all users who will be part of the Workflow understand their role and the actions they can take.
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