Setting up Approval Workflows

Create internal approval workflows for both claims and payment schedules.

Overview

If your Claims or Payment Schedules require multiple internal approvals, use these workflows to ensure everyone required signs off on them each month. Any additional parties linked to your project will not be able to see who the Approvers are. 

For the Claim Approver only, you can add the Approval Audit Trail to the appendix of your issued payment scheduled if desired. This shows who and when claim approval was given.

Approval Workflow Types

Approval Workflows for you claims/ payment schedules can be created three different ways at varying levels:

• Project - The approval workflow created will be the default workflow for all Contracts under it. This is done on the Project Settings page.
• Contract - The approval workflow created will only be specific to this contract in the Project.  This is done at the Contract Settings page.
• Claim/ Payment Schedule  - This approval workflow will only be for the specific claim or payment schedule. This is done in the claim/ payment schedule draft review page.

Once you navigate to the approval workflow edit page at either level, follow the instructions below to set them up.

Setting up your Approval Workflow

At a Project or Contract settings you will find this section, click Edit to begin setting up your approval workflow.

If you are creating an approval workflow for the Claim/Payment Schedule, you will find it at the bottom when you are at the Review and Submit stage. Press the pencil icon on the top right to set up the approval workflow.

You will then be taken to the Claim/Payment Schedule workflow page. To begin, click + Approval Step and then + Add Approver. You can customize the name of this approval step to better describe it, such as "QS Approval" or "Project Managers," by selecting the pencil icon.

You can then select Project/Contract members as Approvers at this step. Approvers can be required or optional. Required Approvers will get an email alert every time their input is needed (see here PayLab Email Alerts for setting up Email Alerts). Optional Approvers will need to be informed individually to jump into PayLab to action an approval. Each Approval step can have multiple Approvers however there is only a maximum of 5 Approval steps that can be created.

At the final step of the workflow, you can add recipients onto the Email List so that they get automatically notified every time a claim/payment schedules has been issued. 

Once all the Approval steps have been set up, make sure you to hit Save at the bottom of the page and now you're good to go!