Sequential versus Hierarchical

There are two possible methods of establishing Approval Lists and Routing Rules, Hierarchical or Sequential, depending on the system setting chosen.  Sequential is the default and recommended setting.  The differences are shown in the examples below:

In our Example, the differences in approval list and routing rule setup will be shown for a requisition approval routing based on two (2) different departments and the following criteria:

Department Employees, Supervisors and Managers enter requisitions;

Financial Approvals are required for all requests. Additionally, there are Non-financial approvals required, as follows;

Capital Items require CFO Approval regardless of the requesting person/department if the line amount is more than $500 and is coded to a Capital GL Account number;

Computer Hardware and Software items require IT Manager approval, based on GL account coding on the line;

Rebecca Bond is the Sales Department Administrative Assistant and enters requests.

Hierarchical

Approval List setup (Enable Sequential is NOT selected in System Settings) a Approval List is required for each possible routing at each dollar level, as follows:

With the Above Example we would need to REPEAT THE ABOVE FOR Department 20 and any other department routings - with just departments 10 and 20 that would be thirty-two (32) lists that would be needed to accomplish the necessary routing for the department requesters alone; Approval lists would also need to be setup for the Department Supervisor and Manager routings since we would not want their requisitions to be routed to themselves for approval.

Sequential

As shown below only seven (7) lists would be required with the Sequential Setting turned on:

Approval List setup (Enable Sequential selected in System Settings), allows us to create a single approval list for each approver, the sequential setting allows the routing rules to flow through multiple approval lists.

So, for Department 10 - if the Requisition is $3,500 and any item is coded to a Capital GL Account the approval flow would be:

Rebecca enters a Requisition -

Approver #1 - John Smith, approves as her Supervisor up to the $500 level, then goes to

Approver #2 - Tina Camp, approves as the Department Manager up to the $2500, then goes to

Approver #3 - Ben James, approves as the VP up to $5000 Level, then goes to

Approver #4 - Sandy Bolton, approves for the Capital item

In order to complete and accomplish the above work flow we need to associate these approval lists on a Routing Rule that Rebecca is associated with.  In either setup (Hierarchical or Sequential), for the complete routing we need to further define our criteria for the Computer Hardware and Software and Capital GL Account numbers to determine whether or not we need a Non-financial list.