A cost object can be used determine the approval flow for expenses or invoices, either as part of the standard Yokoy approval strategy or a custom workflow built with the Workflow Designer.
Approval in non-hierarchical cost objects
For each cost object, you determine the default approver who is responsible for approving all expenses/invoices submitted against this cost object.
When an expense or invoice is submitted with this cost object, the person selected in the Default approver field is responsible for approving the expense/invoice before it is reviewed by Finance (if configured as a Review strategy).
If the approver is the same as expense/invoice expense submitter, by default, the document is automatically approved (unless the workflow escalates to another user by default - custom workflows only).
You can delegate temporarily any approvals for the cost object to another user by selecting the user in Delegate field (either in Admin > Cost objects or in Manager > Cost objects) and choosing an expiry date.
Approval in hierarchical cost objects
Cost objects can have a parent-child relationship. This determines how the approval is handled in those cost objects, automatically escalating any expenses/invoices to the parent cost object approver where the expense/invoice exceeds a certain threshold.
In hierarchical cost objects, you determine:
parent-child relationship i.e. does the cost object belong to another cost object?
default approver i.e. who approves?
approval limit i.e. at what point does someone else need to approve?
The approval limit determines the maximum point after which the cost object’s parent object determines the person to approve the expense/invoice. In other words, approval is escalated up a level, to the parent cost object’s owner for approval, according to a Four-eyes principle.
For example, if a user in Cost Object 1A submits an expense report, it requires approval from the head of a cost object.
If the expense report exceeds the approval limit for the head of Cost Object 1A (e.g., CHF 1,000), the expense report requires approval from the head of the parent cost object, in this case the head of Cost Object 1.
If the expense report has been approved by the head of Cost Object 1A because the expense amount of the expense report was below CHF 1,000, the head of the parent cost object doesn’t need to sign off on the expense. In this example, there are only 3 hierarchical levels, but the cost objects can be set up with unlimited levels where complex approval flows are needed.
The top-level cost object is not applicable in all approval flows, but necessary for the technical setup. The top-level cost object can be set as invisible for all users, if needed.