Shared Services Center TRAVEL AND EXPENSE REIMBURSEMENT APPROVING / RETURNING PRE-APPROVAL AND EXPENSE REPORTS

Transcription

1 Shared Services Center TRAVEL AND EXPENSE REIMBURSEMENT APPROVING / RETURNING PRE-APPROVAL AND EXPENSE REPORTS Purpose: To provide our Chrome River users with brief instructions on how to approve or return pre-approval and expense reports. Disclaimer: The images used in this example are clips from the Chrome River QA (testing) environment. FAQs and guides are available online at Additional assistance is provided by the SSC Help Center at , , or help@ssc.vccs.edu.

2 General Information: If you a part of the approval workflow for pre-approval and expense reports, you will be required to review and approve (or return) pre-approval and expense reports. Not all pre-approval and expense reports will have the same exact approval routing workflow. Approval routing workflows are scenario based, meaning different expense types, expense amounts, travel locations, etc. may require different approval routing. What does your approval mean? When you approve a travel related request you are certifying that you have reviewed and confirmed the following: o The expense incurred are for official college business and are reasonable and necessary to support the mission of the college. o All expenses comply with CAPP Topic State Travel Regulations, VCCS Travel Policies, and Individual College Travel Policies. o Information contained within the report is correct and accurate, including all supporting documentation. o Expenditures are charged to the proper fund, department, and campus. o Expenses meets all sponsor guidelines, if applicable. Approvers have the ability to review and approve (or return) reports in the Chrome River application. Chrome River will send an notification to each person responsible for an approval in the routing workflow. If an approver has not taken action on a report, Chrome River will continue to send a daily reminder to the approver. It is highly encouraged to review and approve (or return) reports in a timely manner. If reports are routing to you in error, please contact the SSC Help Center. Please provide the expense owner s name, report ID, and whom the report should be routed to for review and approval (or return).

3 Approver Notifications: From the approval request, approvers can only see a high-level summary of the expenses. Additionally, approvers will not be able to see any attachments. Approvers will need to log into the Chrome River application to take approve or return reports. horoughly review the approval request prior to approving or returning reports. When an approver receives an approval notification, the body will look similar to the image below: At the bottom on the approval notification, you will notice there are instructions on how to log into the Chrome River application to approve or return a report. The instructions read as follows: To take action on these expenses, take either of the following steps: - Please log in to Chrome River to review this pre-approval (or expense report) and Accept or Return the request.

4 Review and Approve (or Return) via Chrome River Application: From the Chrome River application, approvers can see all details of the report, including attachments, comments, locations, etc. As mentioned on page 3, the SSC T&E Team highly encourages approvers to use this method for reviewing approval requests. If you have reports pending your approval, you will see an orange Approvals ribbon on the left side of your Chrome River home (welcome) screen. From here, you will need to select which report type that you ready to review and take action, Expense Reports or Pre-Approvals. This will take you to either your Expense Report Approval queue or Pre-Approval Report Approval queue (see page 5). You may also view your approval requests from the left menu. Click on the three line icon at the top left of your screen. You may select the report type that you wish to review and take action. This will take you to either your Expense Report Approval queue or Pre-Approval Report Approval queue (see page 5).

5 Once you select the report type that you wish to review, you will need to select the report that requires your review and approval (or return) from either the expense report approval queue or preapproval report approval queue. Click on the report name once (report will be highlighted light blue when selected). By clicking the report name once, the preview page will populate on the right side of the screen. The preview page displays the high-level summary of expenses.

6 Review and Approve (or Return) from the Preview Page: Approvers have the ability to review and approve (or return) from the preview page, which again, the SSC T&E Team highly encourages approvers to open the report and fully review the report and attachments before taking action. To approve a report from the preview page, simply click APPROVE on the top right corner of the report screen. After clicking APPROVE once, you will be required to click APPROVE a second time as a confirmation. This decreases the risk of approving reports by accident or by mistake. This is especially helpful for those approvers with a multitude of reports in their approval queues.

7 To return a report from the preview page, simply click RETURN on the top right corner of the report screen. After clicking RETURN once, you will be required to provide return comments to the expense owner. When returning an expense report, please ensure to provide the expense owner with an explanation of why the report is being returned, as well as the corrective action required. See example in the image directly below. After entering your return comments, please click RETURN again.

8 Review and Approve (or Return) from the Opened Report: Approvers have the ability to review and approve (or return) from within the opened report. To approve a report, simply click SUBMIT on the bottom left half of the report screen, under the list of expense line items. After clicking SUBMIT once, you will be required to click SUBMIT a second time as a confirmation.

9 To return a report, simply click RETURN at the bottom left corner on the left half of the report screen. After clicking RETURN once, you will be required to provide return comments to the expense owner. When returning an expense report, please ensure to provide the expense owner with an explanation of why the report is being returned, as well as the corrective action required. See example in the image directly below. After entering your return comments, please click RETURN again.

10 Returning Individual Line Items (Split Approvals): Approvers have the ability to return individual line items rather than returning an entire report. This type of action is considered a Split Approval. The SSC T&E Team discourages approvers from split approving reports. By split approving reports, the projected approvers will not see line items a previous approver has returned, which prevent the projected approvers from seeing the whole travel picture. This could cause unnecessary returns from the projected approvers and/or cause reports to sit in the projected approver s approval queue for an unnecessary amount of time before action is taken. To return an individual line item, select the line item you wish to return. Simply click the line item once (the line item will be highlighted blue when selected). Next, on the right half of the report screen click Return.

11 After clicking RETURN once, you will be required to provide return comments to the expense owner. When returning an expense report, please ensure to provide the expense owner with an explanation of why the report is being returned, as well as the corrective action required. See example in the image directly below. After entering your return comments, please click SAVE. After you return and save the applicable line items, you will need to click SUBMIT on the bottom left half of the report screen, under the list of expense line items.

12 After clicking SUBMIT once, you will be required to click SUBMIT a second time as a confirmation. At this point, all Returned individual line items will be sent back to the expense owner, and all line items that were not Returned will be forwarded to the projected approver for review and action.

13 Adjusting Individual Line Items: Approvers also have the ability to adjust line items. However, there are only a few fields that can be adjusted by an approver. Approvers can adjust the following: - Add additional attachments - Edit the Approved Amount field - Edit the Business Purpose field, if applicable - Edit the Department Code field When adjusting a report, please ensure to provide the expense owner with an explanation of why the report is being adjusted. To adjust an individual line item, select the line item you wish to adjust. Simply click the line item once (the line item will be highlighted blue when selected). Next, on the right half of the report screen, click ADJUST.

14 After clicking ADJUST once, you will be required to provide adjust comments to the expense owner. When adjusting an expense report, please ensure to provide the expense owner with an explanation of why the report is being adjusted. See example in the image directly below. After entering your adjust comments, please click SAVE. After you adjust and save the applicable line items, you will need to click SUBMIT on the bottom left half of the report screen, under the list of expense line items.

15 After clicking SUBMIT once, you will be required to click SUBMIT a second time as a confirmation.