Overview
Signoff Groups are used within Assure Expenses to define the route that a claim must go through, from the moment it is submitted until it is paid. They provide a consistent, clear and easily maintainable method of routing claims to the correct approvers, in line with your organisation's expense policy.
A simplified structure of a Signoff Group is split into 3 levels:
For each Signoff Group, there can be multiple Signoff Stages. Within a stage, it is possible to route the claim to a different Signoff Person. Claimants can be assigned to different Signoff Groups based on the route their claims need to follow to be authorised and paid.
As a claim progresses through the different stages of a Signoff Group, a full audit trail is captured in the Claim History, which is displayed on the Claim Details page. The audit trail shows specific actions during the process such as claim submission, moving to a new stage, approval and allocation for payment, as well as displaying at which stage the action occurred. Queries about the claim progress can be quickly resolved by checking the structure of a Signoff Group and by using the Claim History.
There are options available for each Signoff Stage which allow administrators to add further customisation including; one click signoff, approver justifications, declarations and email notifications.
- Customisation - Allows you to create an approval process of varying complexity to match your organisation's expense policy. The options available will provide unique solutions for organisations of all sizes.
- Secure - Built-in validation which will restrict approvers from authorising their own claims.
- Flexible - Routing can be set to redirect claims when approvers are on holiday, ensuring that the claim will continue to be processed, allowing the claimant to be reimbursed as soon as possible.
- Auditable - The approval process is tracked throughout the life of a claim, ensuring approval information for each stage is available within the Claim History.
Implementation/Best Practice
The Signoff Person that is selected for a Signoff Stage will determine who the claim must go to for approval. Selecting a Signoff Person will significantly affect how a Signoff Group will work. The available Signoff Person types are explained below:
| Employee | Claims will be submitted to a specific employee. The employee must have an Access Role with permissions for Check & Pay in order to approve the claims. |
| Line Manager | Claims will be submitted to the claimant's Line Manager. This is the preferred method for many organisations as the Line Manager can be set during employee configuration. If a manager leaves your organisation, you will need to go into each claimant that falls under that manager and change the Line Manager field**. You can use the Import Wizard to make this process more efficient. It is considered best practice for a manager to configure a delegate within Assure Expenses so that there is a backup approver, should the manager not be available for a period of time. |
| Budget Holder Responsible | Claims will be submitted to a specific Budget Holder (an employee with assigned responsibility for a budget). **An alternative solution to the disadvantage listed in the Line Manager section would be to set each Line Manager as a Budget Holder and then have a separate Signoff Group for each, with the approval stage set to 'Budget Holder Responsible'. This would substantially reduce administrative burden if a manager leaves the organisation, as you would only need to visit the Budget Holder menu and change the manager in charge of that budget. This change would then apply to each claimant who has this Signoff Group applied, negating the need to change the Line Manager field for each claimant under the manager who has left. The Signoff Group name can then also be altered, if necessary, to reflect the name of the new Budget Holder. This method is particularly effective if you have large groups of claimants under a single line manager. |
| Cost Code Owner | Claims will be submitted to the owner of the Cost Code to which the expense is being charged. The owner may be an individual or a team of approvers. For example, claims set against a "Training" Cost Code could be directed to the Training Manager. Claims can be split to multiple Cost Codes and each Cost Code Owner would need to approve the expense items assigned to their specific Cost Code before the claim could progress to the next Signoff Stage. |
| Assignment Supervisor (NHS Only) | This works in a similar way to Line Manager. An NHS staff member is assigned to an ESR Assignment. It is common for an NHS employee to have more than one ESR Assignment and each ESR Assignment will have an Assignment Supervisor. In situations where a claimant has two or more assignments and their claim contains expenses which are allocated to each assignment, the claim will be split and the expenses will be directed to the relevant Assignment Supervisors. |
| Determined by Claimant | When submitting a claim, the claimant will be able to select who to submit their claim to. In these scenarios, the claimant will likely have more than one approver to select from and it is up to their discretion to select to the correct approver for the submitted claim. An example of where this may be useful is for a maintenance worker who works for multiple departments within an organisation. It would be the responsibility of that worker to select the correct approver based upon which department they were working for when the expense was incurred. |
| Team | Claims will be submitted to a group of employees who have been added to a Team within Assure Expenses. For example, this could be used as the final stage of a Signoff Group where the team consisted of finance personnel. Once the claim has been approved by a manager in the previous stage, a member of the Finance Team could assign the claim to themselves and allocate it for payment. The major benefit of using a Team Signoff Person is that it reduces the chance of delayed approval in cases of staff absence/leave. |
| Approval Matrix | If your organisation implements a grading structure, typically found in larger organisations, where each employee is given a grade and that grade has an authorised signoff level, Assure Expenses allows you to replicate that structure for your approval process. For example, you have a grading structure where:
In this situation, Approval Matrix would be the most suitable solution. When claims are submitted the total will be checked and the claim will only be sent to an approver with the appropriate grade. In this example, a claim for £800 could not be routed to Grade 1, therefore it must be routed to Grade 2, in line with the approval levels. For further details on the specific options for configuring an Approval Matrix, view Manage Approval Matrices. |
| Determined by claimant (from Approval Matrix) | This works in a similar way to the Approval Matrix, however, the claimant will be able to select their approver from the appropriate Approval Matrix level, should it contain more than one approver. Alongside this, there are further options which will allow you to display approvers from a set number of levels above the correct Approval Matrix level and also restrict approvers who are not above the claimant's level. |
| Scan & Attach (for Expedite customers) | Only for users of Selenity's Expedite service. Faster approval of claims with receipt images. The claimant records their claim information within Assure Expenses, then sends the receipts in the provided envelopes to Selenity’s UK processing centre. When the Expedite team receive the envelope(s) that are associated with the claim, the Claim History will be updated to 'Received'. During this stage, the claim will be locked for editing, however, the claim can still be unsubmitted. The process is fully auditable, keeping management fully informed. |
| Validation (for Expedite customers) | Selecting Validation will ensure that the claim progresses to the Validation stage of the Expedite process. This stage will consist of the Validators checking compliance of expense receipts. The status of the validation process can be followed on the Claim Details page. |
