Skip to main content
All CollectionsProject Settings and ConfigurationProject Settings
Configure Project Settings: Financial Approval Workflows
Configure Project Settings: Financial Approval Workflows

Setting up your projects Financial Approval Workflow for your budget, budget changes, Invoices, Contracts, Contract Changes & Amendments.

JD Williams avatar
Written by JD Williams
Updated this week

Overview

The Financial Approval Workflow allows you to establish clear approval processes, ensuring all items are thoroughly reviewed and authorized before finalization. This improves accountability, control, and transparency in your projects.

Prerequisites

  • Individuals who will be on the workflow must have an INGENIOUS account and be added to the project through the Project Directory.

  • If using Billable Roles to identify an individual in the workflow, the Employee must have a Billable Role added to their account.

  • Tip: Set up templates for financial approval workflows to save time.

Process

Reviewing Financial Approval Workflow Templates (if applicable)

Your workspace Administrators may have configured financial approval workflow templates for you to utilize. To review these templates, go to Lists & Templates > Financial Approval Workflows.

Financial Approval Workflow templates may use a “Billable Role.” For example, the workflow may say that an item must go to a Project Manager and then to a Director. If Billable Roles are utilized in a financial approval workflow, the Employees should have their Billable Roles configured by a workspace Administrator:

Applying a Financial Approval Workflow

  • Open your project and use the Project Navigation Menu to open Project Settings.

  • From the list of project settings on the left, select Financial Approval Workflows.

  • Use the tabs to set up a financial approval workflow for the different financial items

    • Budget Approval, Budget Changes, Change Orders, Amendments, Initial Contracts, Contracts, and Invoices.

  • If you are in an Owner's Rep workspace type, you can also set the Client Approval Settings. Specify the client's involvement for each item:

    • Send to Client if the client is working with you on-system and will log into INGENIOUS to approve items.

    • Record Approval if you will record the client's approval on your side.

    • Disabled if client approval is not required.

  • When creating an approval workflow, open the applicable tab and click Create Approval Workflow. Choose if you are creating a workflow from scratch (Empty Workflow) or using an existing template.

Creating an Empty Workflow

Use this option to create a project-specific workflow from scratch.

  1. Name the workflow and click Create.

  2. Click Add Approver. Use the Employee/Role dropdown labeled "Choose Approver" to add each individual to the workflow. The dropdown will show the employees in the Project Directory. You can also reorder or remove the employees from the workflow by dragging the symbol shown in the image below:

  3. Toggling the Approval Sequence function on or off will allow you to specify whether this item should be sent to the individuals on the workflow one at a time or all at once.

  4. Optional: Turn the Cost Codes toggle on to create different workflows for different cost codes on your budget. For example, the consultant invoices could follow a different workflow than the contractor invoices.

  5. Optional: Turn Approval Limit On to specify approval limits:

    1. Less Than: The employee can only approve items up to this amount. The employee will be bypassed in the workflow if the item exceeds their limit.

    2. Greater Than: The employee will only have to approve items if they exceed this amount.

  6. Click Save.

Tip: To save time, if your created workflow applies to other financial items, choose “Apply to Other Approvals," and the same workflow will be applied to those other financial workflows.

Using an Existing Workflow Template

  1. Click Choose Template.

  2. Scroll or search to find the template you are looking for. Select the template and click Select.

  3. Name the workflow and click Create.

  4. In the example below, the workflow template utilized includes a Project Manager, a Project Executive, and a Director. On this project, we already have a Project Manager and a Director, but we need to assign a Project Executive to use this workflow.

    After applying a template, you can make changes if needed.

  5. Click Save.

If I Change the Financial Approval Workflow, will this apply to all Approvals?

No, below are the cases in which an approval workflow will update when changes are made and when an approval workflow will not update and will need to be reset or reverted.
​

The Financial Approval workflow will be updated if:

  • The approval workflow has not been started

  • There are no pending approvals

The Financial Approval workflow will not be updated if:

  • The item is approved

  • There are pending approval

  • The item has been submitted for internal approval

Now that you have your financial approval workflows all setup, complete with designated approvers and customizable settings. And you can always return to your approval workflow to make changes as needed.

Did this answer your question?