When setting up approvals on the Expense Templates (these are likely to be created for you by an internal System Administrator), there is the option for the client to approve the expenses, for you as an agency to approve expenses, or to have a two-stage approval process, which first goes to the client and then back to the agency to conduct a final check.
If you choose to have the internal step, the sign-off is called Validation in Mercury.
Approving (Validating) an Expense
Two-stage Sign-off (Client approval and internal)
Once the candidate has submitted their expense, it will be displayed in Mercury with a status of Submitted. If the two-stage approval has been set up, an email will be automatically generated to any of the approvers selected by the candidate. If they approve it, the expense entry will have a Status Reason of Approved. This indicates that the agency now needs to run the final check.
NOTE: Anyone in the agency can check and validate the timesheet.
Internal Sign-off Only
If a one-stage process has been set up, the candidate will submit the timesheet. This will update the expense status to Submitted. This will then indicate that the agency will run their check.
Managing Expenses
You may be managing these directly from the placement record but it is likely you will have created a dashboard to manage these.
From the Placement record, click onto the Timesheets & Expenses tab:
Double-click into the Expense row to access it (avoiding all hyperlinks).
The expense record will display information such as the start and end date of that period, the current status, etc.
To review the time entered, click onto the Expenses Lines tab.
The example shows an expense that has been submitted.
If you are happy and wish to approve, select the Validate Expense icon on the toolbar.
This will change the status of the expense to Validated.
The expense record will deactivate and the Status Reason will then change to Complete.
This status will be reflected in the Candidate Portal and move the expense entry from the Submitted Expenses section back to Completed Expenses, with a status of Complete.