What
An approval process can be set up on new Agreement created within Mercury. It is possible to set up approval steps for all new Agreements created within Mercury. This is a great feature for when a manager or a member of the Finance team needs to carry out credit checks before business is made with a new customer.
Another great reason for this facility is that it can function alongside any of the approval processes that can be set up within the Client, Vacancy and Project areas.
NOTE: If the specific approval processes have been set up when a user attempts to finalise a Placement, they will encounter the below alert message making them aware that one or more areas requires action.
NOTE: Approval processes need to be configured at the Mercury implementation stage for your organisation. Please speak to your Customer Success Manager if this set up is required.
Where
Home > Agreement > click into the Agreement record or create a new Agreement > select Request Approval from top ribbon menu > the Approval Status field will be updated from New to Pending Approval
How
As described above, this feature will only be available within Mercury if it has been requested and configured at project implementation stage. However, it can be configured at any later date within Mercury.
NOTE: There are few ways the approval can be set up. The approval can either be created automatically on creation of a new Agreement, or a button named Request Approval can be shown in the top ribbon menu within the Agreement, or by viewing the Timeline section of the Agreement. The button and Timeline concepts both allow the user to make any amendments before submitting the form.
The example we are showing below is based on the setup with the Agreement displaying in the Timeline:
1. To request approval on a new Agreement, navigate to the record and then click into it. The Approval status will be set to New. Once the Agreement has been saved successfully, the Approval status will change from New to Pending Approval:
2. Scroll to the Timeline and if needed, apply a filter so that only Approvals are shown. The approval record will display as follows:
3. The Approver will be able to select from two different views from the Agreement record - if they click the Close Activity button (option 1 on the above image) they will see a dropdown box asking them to either approve or reject the Agreement. If they select the Open Record button (option 2 on the above image) they will be taken to the Approval record which will contain more detail on the pending submission. Below you can find the corresponding outcomes:
Option 1
Option 2
If the Agreement has been approved via either method, the status within the Agreement, the same concept applies if the Agreement has been rejected.
Managing Rejections
When rejecting an approval, it is important to have an easy and effective process to let the consultant know what needs amending. We recommend creating a Task on the Client and changing the Owner to the consultant. Add the notes in the Description field and you could even create a Purpose to report on the number of rejections a consultant is receiving. This is great for training purposes and improving the process:
Authored by Arden Shaw - Digital Adoption Consultant @ Mercury