Delegation And Reassign Approval

This chapter explains two features that help prevent approvals from getting stuck:

1. Reassign Approvals for administrators or approval managers.
2. Delegation / Out-of-Office for users who want new approvals to go to another person during a specific period.

Use these features when an approver is unavailable because of leave, business travel, resignation, role change, or operational handover.

These two features solve different problems:

Feature	Use It When
Reassign Approvals	You need to move approvals that are already pending right now.
Delegation / Out-of-Office	You want future approvals to go to another user during a planned time period.

A common practical flow looks like this:

1

Approval gets stuck

2

Check pending approvals

3

Reassign current items if needed

4

Create delegation for future approvals

5

Apply delegation to current pending items if required

Reassign Approvals

Open Approvals > Reassign Approvals.

This menu is intended for users who have the required access, such as an administrator or approval operations manager.

Use this page when you want to:

1. see which approvals are still pending,
2. identify who currently owns each approval,
3. check whether the current approver is active, inactive, or deleted,
4. move one approval or many approvals to another approver,
5. export the monitoring result for follow-up.

What The Monitoring List Shows

The monitoring list combines pending approvals from:

1. reimbursement approvals, and
2. batch payment approvals.

It only shows approvals that are still actionable now.

Common columns:

Column	What It Means
Object Type	Whether the row is a reimbursement or a batch payment approval.
Number	The document number.
Status	The current document status.
Requester	The user who created the reimbursement or batch payment.
Approval	The approver who currently owns the pending step.
Approver Status	Whether the current approver is active, inactive, or deleted.
Position	The requester's organizational context shown in the monitoring page. Depending on your company setup, this may appear as a position-based label.
Assigned At	When the approval step was assigned.
Pending Age	How long the approval has been waiting.
Action	Opens the document detail page or the reassign action.

Use the monitoring list to understand who currently owns the approval and whether the process is at risk because the approver is unavailable.

Filter And Export Pending Approvals

The filter section helps you narrow the monitoring result.

Common filters:

Filter	What It Does
Object Type	Shows all items, reimbursement only, or batch payment only.
Approval	Filters by the current approver.
Status	Filters by the current approver status, such as active, inactive, or deleted.
Position	Filters by the requester's position or department context.
Minimum Pending Hours	Shows only approvals that have been waiting for at least a certain number of hours.
Search	Finds rows by number, requester, or approver-related text.

Use Export when you want to:

1. share the pending approval list with another team,
2. review long-waiting approvals offline, or
3. keep an operational follow-up file.

Reassign A Single Approval

Use the row-level reassign action when only one document needs attention.

Typical steps:

1. Open Reassign Approvals.
2. Find the pending row.
3. Click the reassign action on that row.
4. Choose the new approver.
5. Enter the reason for the reassignment.
6. Save the change.

Use single reassign when:

1. one approver is absent for one urgent document,
2. one document was assigned to the wrong person, or
3. you want to handle a special case without moving other approvals.

Reassign Multiple Approvals

Use the checkbox selection when several approvals need to move at once.

Typical steps:

1. Select multiple rows from the monitoring list.
2. Click Reassign Multiple.
3. Choose one new approver for all selected rows.
4. Enter one reason that explains the reassignment.
5. Save the change.

Use multiple reassign when:

1. an approver is on leave unexpectedly,
2. a team lead resigns or is deactivated,
3. finance wants to move a group of stuck approvals quickly.

Important behavior:

1. The system validates each row again when you save.
2. If a row is no longer pending, it is skipped.
3. The result message shows how many rows were processed and how many were skipped.
4. Reassign only changes the current pending approval step. It does not change the historical approval record that is already completed.

Choose The New Approver Carefully

When you choose a new approver, the dropdown may show an approval access warning next to that user.

This warning is informational. It does not block the save action.

Possible meanings:

Warning	Meaning
Approval access complete	The selected user has both reimbursement approval access and batch payment approval access.
Missing reimbursement approval access	The selected user may not be able to open reimbursement approval pages normally.
Missing batch approval access	The selected user may not be able to open batch payment approval pages normally.
Missing reimbursement and batch approval access	The selected user may not be able to open approval pages for either type.

Best practice:

1. Choose an active user in the same company.
2. Prefer a user whose role already has the approval access they need.
3. If a warning appears, ask the administrator to review role access before the reassigned approval needs action.

What Reassign Changes

After a reassignment succeeds:

1. the pending approval step moves to the new approver,
2. the document's current approval owner is updated,
3. the document keeps its existing status,
4. the document activity timeline records the reassignment reason.

Reassign does not:

1. approve the document automatically,
2. reopen completed approval steps,
3. change the configured approval rule itself,
4. permanently replace the original approver in future documents.

If you need future approvals to go somewhere else for a planned period, use delegation instead.

Delegation / Out-of-Office

Open Profile, then find the Delegation / Out-of-Office section.

This feature is self-service. A user manages only their own delegation rules.

Use delegation when you know in advance that you will be unavailable, for example:

1. annual leave,
2. business trip,
3. temporary handover,
4. short out-of-office period.

A delegation rule tells the system:

• who the delegate is,
• when the delegation starts,
• when it ends,
• why the delegation exists.

How Delegation Works

Delegation affects future approval assignments during the active period.

That means:

1. if a new reimbursement approval is generated during the active delegation period, the system can assign it to the delegate,
2. if a new batch payment approval is generated during the active delegation period, the system can assign it to the delegate,
3. the delegation is one-hop only.

One-hop means:

• if User A delegates to User B,
• and User B has another delegation rule,
• the system still stops at User B.

This prevents approval routing from chaining across many users.

Create A Delegation Rule

In Profile > Delegation / Out-of-Office, click Add.

Typical fields:

Field	What To Fill In
Delegate	The user who should receive your approvals during the delegation period.
Start Date	When the delegation starts.
End Date	When the delegation ends.
Reason	Why the delegation is needed.

Recommended practice:

1. Set the period clearly, including the expected return time.
2. Enter a reason that is understandable for audit and operations.
3. Choose a delegate who can actually review the approvals that may be routed to them.

Delegate Access Warning

Just like reassign, the delegation dropdown may show an approval access warning.

This is a warning only. It helps you see whether the selected delegate already has access to:

1. reimbursement approvals,
2. batch payment approvals, or
3. both.

If the delegate does not have full access, the rule can still be saved, but operations may still need an administrator to update the delegate's role.

Delegation Statuses

The delegation list in the profile page can show several statuses.

Status	Meaning
Active	The delegation is currently in effect.
Scheduled	The delegation is saved, but the start time has not been reached yet.
Expired	The delegation period has passed.
Inactive	The rule was manually deactivated.

Use these statuses to understand whether a rule is currently affecting future approvals.

Edit Or Deactivate A Delegation Rule

You can still manage a delegation rule while it is:

1. active, or
2. scheduled.

Typical actions:

Action	Use It When
Edit	You need to change the delegate, time period, or reason before the rule is no longer valid.
Deactivate	You want to stop using the rule without deleting the historical record.

Expired or inactive rules remain useful as history, but they are no longer used for new approval routing.

Apply Delegation To Existing Pending Approvals

Delegation normally affects future approvals.

If you also want to move your current pending approvals to the same delegate, use Apply to Existing Pending Approvals from the delegation list.

This action uses the same reassignment logic as the monitoring feature, but only for your own current pending approvals.

Typical use:

1. you create an out-of-office delegation rule today,
2. you already have pending approvals assigned to you,
3. you click Apply to Existing Pending Approvals, and
4. the system moves eligible pending reimbursements and batch payment approvals to your delegate.

Result behavior:

1. the system reports how many approvals were processed,
2. rows that are no longer eligible are skipped,
3. the activity timeline records the delegation-based reassignment.

This action is useful when you do not want to leave old pending approvals behind while your future approvals already go to the delegate.

Delegation Rules And Validations

A delegation rule is rejected if it breaks one of the main validations.

Common validation rules:

Rule	Meaning
Same company	The delegate must belong to the same company.
Active user only	The delegate must be active and not deleted.
Not yourself	You cannot delegate approvals to yourself.
No overlapping self rules	One user cannot have overlapping active delegation periods for themselves.
No reciprocal overlap	Mutual overlap such as A delegates to B while B delegates back to A for the same period is not allowed.

These checks help keep approval routing predictable and reduce the risk of approval loops or conflicting handovers.

When To Use Reassign Vs Delegation

Use this rule of thumb:

Situation	Better Tool
One document is stuck right now	Reassign Approvals
Many pending approvals need to move now	Reassign Multiple
You plan to be away next week	Delegation / Out-of-Office
You already created delegation and also want to move your current queue	Apply to Existing Pending Approvals
Someone already left the company and their approvals are stuck	Reassign Approvals

In practice, operations often use both:

1. create delegation for future approvals,
2. apply delegation to current pending approvals,
3. use Reassign Approvals only when admin intervention is still needed.

Common Problems

Problem	What To Do
You do not see Reassign Approvals.	Ask your administrator to review your role access for the menu and its scopes.
You cannot choose a delegate.	Make sure the user is active, belongs to the same company, and is not your own account.
Save fails when creating delegation.	Check the date range, overlap with another rule, or reciprocal delegation conflict.
A warning says the delegate is missing approval access.	The rule can still be saved, but role access may need to be updated by an administrator.
Apply to Existing Pending Approvals skips some rows.	Some approvals may no longer be pending or may no longer belong to your current actionable queue.
Reassign succeeds for some items but not all.	Some selected rows may have changed state before the save was processed.
The delegate does not receive older approvals automatically.	Use Apply to Existing Pending Approvals after creating the delegation rule.
You expected delegation to permanently change approval rules.	Delegation only changes routing during the defined period. It does not change the configured approval rule itself.