Approval Strategy and statistical IO

[former_member337129]

Hello,

In the employee master record I have a cost center. I don't have a responsible person in the cost center itself. I can bring to C4TE Reporting Line Items as well (org structure).

Based on those conditions above two scenarios for approval strategy are available:

Case 1: The approver is my line item manager (own cost center)

Approval strategy: employee line item  and it will read from the Reporting Line Items. Is there a problem that the Cost centers don't have responsible persons?

Case 2: The approver is the responsible person of the different Cost Center (<> own) or IO.

What would be the option here to achieve that?

Should I need to populate a responsible person in the Cost Centers or IOs before I bring them to the C4TE?

How I can combine that both strategy in one: the condition is that the cost center is <> my own cost center?

Can I bring from SAP ERP Statistical IO without Cost center and Company Code

Thanks

[peter_serdarusic · Accepted solution]

Tsvetelin@ Yancheva wrote:

Case 1: The approver is my line item manager (own cost center)
Approval strategy: employee line item  and it will read from the Reporting Line Items. Is there a problem that the Cost centers don't have responsible persons?

No, there is no problem, if cost centers have no center managers assigned, if you set up a reporting line manager approvel. For this case you are able to assign an employee to a default cost center and you can set up a deviating assignment to a reporting line unit for this employee.

Tsvetelin@ Yancheva wrote:


Case 2: The approver is the responsible person of the different Cost Center (<> own) or IO.
What would be the option here to achieve that? 
Should I need to populate a responsible person in the Cost Centers or IOs before I bring them to the C4TE?

You are merging cost-driven approval again with reporting line driven approval. You should clarify what the strategy is: shall the line manager approve or shall the owner of the cost object, to which the costs of an expense report are assigned, approve. Based on the answer you can set up the approval process in CfTE.

Tsvetelin@ Yancheva wrote:

How I can combine that both strategy in one: the condition is that the cost center is <> my own cost center?

That is possible, in the list of possible 'work distribution categories', that can be used for settuing up the approval process, you can find an entry 'Line Manager and Other Cost Object Managers'. This will identifiy the line manager of an employee and the managers of other cost objects not equal to the default cost center, which are involved in the expense report.

[former_member337129 · Accepted solution]

Thanks a lot. What about the statistical IO - can I bring them to C4TE without Cost Center and IO from SAP ERP?

[former_member337129 · Accepted solution]

Hello,

the exact requirements are confirmed.

Approval needs to be done by the owner of Cost center in case that the Cost center is different than the employee cost center. Can I build an approval strategy in that case without having a responsible person in the cost center master record?

What about the statistical IO - can I bring them to C4TE without Cost Center and IO from SAP ERP?

[former_member337129 · Accepted solution]

Hello, your input please

[peter_serdarusic · Accepted solution]

Tsvetelina Yancheva wrote:

the exact requirements are confirmed.
Approval needs to be done by the owner of Cost center in case that the Cost center is different than the employee cost center. Can I build an approval strategy in that case without having a responsible person in the cost center master record?

Yes, that should work using the work distribution 'Line Manager and Other Cost Object Approvers': if the employee cost center is involved, the line manager is involved as approver, if other cost objects are involved, the corresponding managers are involved as approvers.

Tsvetelina Yancheva wrote:
What about the statistical IO - can I bring them to C4TE without Cost Center and IO from SAP ERP?

I have no idea, you should ask in a separate new thread.

[former_member337129 · Accepted solution]

Thanks a lot Peter,

How does the system know who is the corresponding manager without having a responsible person in the other cost object (cost center) ?

Thanks,

Tsvetelina

[peter_serdarusic · Accepted solution]

Well, you need to replicate the corresponding object with or without manager, e.g. cost centers without manager (or dummy manager) and projects with manager. In addition you can set up an reportling line unit (RLU) structure with managers and assign the employees to these units, so the system knows, who is the line manager of an employee. Having set up the system with the information necessary for the approval process you can set up the approval process defintion and use work distributions for the approval steps, which match the master data setup.

[former_member337129 · Accepted solution]

Hello, I am back to my questions. I will summarize again the cases:

In the employee master record I have a cost center. I don't have responsible persons in the cost centers itself. I will bring to C4TE Reporting Line Items (org structure).

Based on those conditions above two scenarios for approval strategy are available:

Case 1, employee own cost center on the expense report: The approver is my line item manager

Case 2, Cost Center<> own on the expense report: The approver is the responsible person of the different Cost Center (there is no responsible person in the master record). I can bring a file with the manual approvers if that would help.

What should be the work distribution rule?

I don't see a work distribution: "the line manager of the employee and manual approver" combined, if I use the manual approver for the second case.

I don't see a condition Cost Center <> employee own CC if I use conditions.

Can I create a two steps to achieve the above?

What would be the work distribution and condition to fulfill the requirements due to the fact that there is a responsible person on the cost center?

(If I use the manual approver I read that the approver always will be overwritten with the manual approver), which is not my case. Would manual approver help at all?)

Thanks,

Tsvetelina

[peter_serdarusic · Accepted solution]

You should be able to achieve this with single step defintion and no condition defintion (so then the step is always true) and the usage of the wor distribution 'Line Manager when Employee's Cost Center and Other Cost Object Approvers'. Teh defintion of this work distribution states: "The line manager when employee's cost center and the owners of other cost objects." This means: if the employee's cot center is involved in the cost distribution of the expense report, the line manager is involved as approver, if other cost objects (like other cost centers, projects, networks, ...) are involved, the corresponding managers of these objects are also involved as approvers.

[former_member337129 · Accepted solution]

How the system knows who is the corresponding manager of the other object?

I don't have a responsible person inside the cost center.

[peter_serdarusic · Accepted solution]

How will you assign an approval task to the manager of a cost object, if you do not tell the system in the master data setup, who the manager of this particular object is? If you do no tell it you cannot set up rules like '..., then the approval task shall go to the manager of the other cost object". The basis needs to be there before you configure approval processes.

[former_member337129 · Accepted solution]

Thanks. This is exactly my question: can I use the  manual approver somehow instead of the owner of thr other cost object to fulfil the requirements (first post).

[peter_serdarusic · Accepted solution]

Not quite sure, what you mean with 'manual approver'. There is a technic called "manually assigned approver", which is an employee-specific lookup table and there is no assignment possible to any cost object. If you want achieve a cost-driven approval, then you should replicate the cost objects with the corresponding managers so that CfTE can distribute the approvals to these managers.

[former_member337129 · Accepted solution]

Thanks Peter

[sudmeier · Accepted solution]

Hi Tsvetelina,

cost centers might be replicated without manager assignment, but if they also could be used by employees not assigned to that cost center they need to have a manager, as otherwise the approval by the manager of a deviating cost center is not possible.

Other cost objects cannot be replicated without a manager, but you could do the following:

• - set a dummy manager in the BAdI in the ERP extraction (otherwise the cost objects are not extracted)
• - do not use the IDOC integration, but the CSV file download in ERP
• - replace the dummy manager by the correct one manually in the csv file
• - upload the file to CfTE and process it

If you do the delta change pointer processing via report RBDMIDOC online instead of using a background job you even could use the CSV file download for delta replication. So you could extract the changed and newly created cost objects to a CSV file every day or every week, for example.

Concerning statistical IOs the only option we provide is the following:

• The approver of the deviating statistical IO is the manager of the IO
• the real costs are always booked to the home cost center of the employee independant of which statistical IO is used

Best regards, Reinhard

[former_member337129 · Accepted solution]

Thanks a lot.

[andyschaefer]

Hi,

whatever you do, please keep in mind that responsible persons are mandatory for cost centers and other cost objects.

So from my point of view the best way to fulfill your requirement is to use the work distribution "Approver of Highest Cost" when setting up the approval process assuming you are assigning the manager as responsibles for the cost centers.

Please check also the online help Setting Up The Approval and Auditing Process.

Regards,
Andreas