Step 6: Approval

Approval

Every commission record needs to undergo single or multiple approvals in order to generate payouts for the eligible employees.

The sixth step in Commission configuration is the Approval and it deals with determining who in your organization is the approver or the approval team for this commission plan.

Configuration of approval process

Configuring approval process is carried out using three steps:

Determining if you want the generated commissions to go through single- or multi-level approval.
Choosing the approver, the approval teams, and the order of approval.
Configuring the actions, if rejected.

Who should approve

Selection of the approver or the approval team

A commission record generated upon meeting the event criteria will need to be approved to be valid and to generate the payouts.

Using the Incentives app, you can assign users, roles, groups as approvers. Also, you can add one or more users or a combination of these approvers as part of the approval process.

Choosing users means the commissions will either have to be approved by any or all those users in the order defined (in the subsequent step).
Choosing roles means the commissions will be approved by any or all users in a particular role in their CRM. Example: Commission manager
Choosing group means the commissions will be approved by any or all users in a particular group. Example: Commission approval team.

Note:

If you have selected roles or groups (where there is a possibility of more than one user in them), then you can choose your preference to seek approval from all of them or just any one of them.
If you select more than one user or approver, you can set the overall approval method. This deals with the preference of the approver and the order of approval.

Set overall approval method

Choosing the preference and order

As mentioned above, choosing more than one user will require you to choose the overall approval method.

Note: This overall approval method applies to all the approvers selected as levels (1,2, till 10) and does not talk about approvers within a particular role or a group.

You can choose the overall approval method as Anyone or Everyone.

Selecting Anyone allows commission approvals by any user chosen in the Who should approve section. Even if one user approves, the commission will be approved.
Selecting Everyone mandates approval by all users chosen in the above step. To generate payouts, a commission record must go through all the defined approval stages.

Choosing the order of approval

Applicable for approvals mandating everyone configured

There are two types of approval orders you can choose from: Sequential and Parallel

Sequential approval sends commission records to the approval based on the configured order (1, 2, 3, and so on). Only upon the first approval, the second approver will be notified. The approval process will be completed only if all the users have approved in order.
Parallel approval sends the commission records for approval to all the configured approvers at once. However, regardless of the order the approval, it is important to note the record must have approval of all the approvers to complete the flow.

Action upon rejection

Applicable for approval methods in sequential order by every approver

Approvals configured in sequential order depend on one another to complete the course. Therefore, determining actions when these users in hierarchy reject a commission record.

Based on the number of approvers involved, the approval will track as many stages. You can choose the default action when any one of the approvers rejects a record.

When a record is rejected in any one of the stages, you can choose to

Reject all previous stages of approvals. Resubmitting will require the commission record to retake the approval from all the approvers in the sequential order mentioned.
Reject only the current stage. The record will be available for resubmission and it will again go back to the same approval stage, or even same approver (in the case the user is chosen) .
Reject and let the approver decide the stage. Approval at that stage will be rejected and the approver can choose if the record should take approval through all the initial stages or retain the record in the current stage.

Notifying the previous approver(s) of the rejection

Admins can choose to notify the approvers of the rejection, so that when the rejected records repeat the approval rounds, they would know about the rejection and pick up from where left.

Medium of notification: Email and In-app (bell) notification.

Configuring Commission Approval Process: How-to

After configuring the recipients of the commission plan, click Save and Next.
In the Commission Approval page, do the following:

Choose the approver or the approval team under the Who should approve section.

If User is selected, choose the user in the user lookup box next to it. Click + to add another approver or approval team. This will add to the approval stage in the process.
If Group is selected, choose the group. Because a group would often contain more than one user, choose the approval preference from the options: Anyone or Everyone.
If Role is selected, choose the role and the preference between the options: Anyone or everyone.

Click Save and Next, if you chose only one user as approver.
If you chose group or role, or users more than one, then choose the preference and order of overall execution under the Set Overall Approval Method.

Choose the preference from the options: Anyone or Everyone.

If you choose Anyone, then click Save and Next.
If you choose Everyone, specify the order: Sequential or Parallel.

Choose the default action when a commission belonging to this plan gets rejected. You can choose to

Reject all previous stages of approvals
Reject only the current stage
Reject and let the approver decide the stage

Further, to notify the previous approvers of the rejection, you can choose to notify them via Email or In-App (Bell) notification. Select one or both, as you prefer.

Click Save and Next. The Approval process for this commission plan is configured. The next step is to set up the plan schedule.

Next: Plan Schedule →