After composing the Financial Plan for a given Entity, the plan can be submitted for approval by the Financial Controller. An appointed reviewer (defined by User Roles by Entity) analyzes the plan and thereafter approves or rejects it. This creates a workflow in which all Financial Plans in the Enterprise are submitted and approved, step by step from bottom to top. The final step in this process is to conclude the Financial Plan at Enterprise level. This chapter describes this entire workflow.
Step 1. Submitting a Financial Plan for approval
Submitting Financial Plans per Entity starts at the lowest level Entities within the Enterprise.
To do this, the Financial Controller goes in the navigation panel to the appropriate Financial Plan and selects Workflow (see picture below).
The status of each entity is shown on the Workflow screen. Lowest level Entities in the enterprise with Open status can now be submitted, by ticking the checkbox for these entity(ies), followed by the Submit open entities button.
WARNING:
It is not possible to submit parent entity Financial Plans until the subsidiary plans have been approved.
Example - Screen: Financial Plan – Workflow – Submit
An optional note can be added when submitting (see picture below). This note pertains to all the Financial Plans that are submitted in this action. In case a separate note is needed for each individual Financial Plan, every plan needs to be submitted separately.
After confirming the submission, the Financial Plan for this Entity can no longer be modified.
Example - Pop-up: Financial Plan – Workflow – Submit
After the submission of Financial Plans, these plans need to be approved by a Reviewer. Multiple users may be assigned the Reviewer role for a single Entity. In that case, only one of these Reviewers will have to review and approve the Financial Plan.
The Reviewer can see the number of his pending (approval)tasks when he selects the homepage or Tasks in the navigation panel (see picture below). At the same Workflow screen where Financial Plans are submitted, plans can also be approved.
Example - Screen: Tasks
Step 2. Approving the Financial Plan
The Reviewer can approve or reject Financial Plans that have the status Submitted. To do this, he selects Workflow in the navigation panel and ticking the checkbox for the entity(ies), followed by the button Review submitted entities, followed by the action Approve or Reject.
The Reviewer is able to add a comment to his review action. Similarly to storing Notes when submitting, only one Note is stored when multiple Financial Plans are approved or rejected in one go. To store individual Notes per Financial Plan, the plans need to be reviewed separately.
The comments added by submission or to the approval step can be viewed by clicking in the column History on the Details.
In case the Reviewer has rejected the Financial Plan of a given Entity, the Financial Controller can again rework the plan. The process of submitting and reviewing starts all over, while comments and status transitions are being tracked.
After approval of all Subsidiary Financial Plans, the Financial Plan of the Parent Entity can be submitted for approval. The Financial Controller of the Parent Entity can submit the plan similar to the process described above in Step 1.