The responsibility of an Expense Approver in reviewing an expense report is to verify policy compliance and the transaction funding source. Expense Managers are able to modify ChartFields and distributions as needed. Denying an expense report "kills" it and it is no longer available to edit and submit.
When reviewing an expense report, an Expense Approver should ensure:
Expense Approvers should Push Back or Deny transactions that do not meet standards or require correction or additional information. They should also monitor status or pending transactions and coordinate efforts to jump-start workflow as needed.
Additional reviewer guidance can be found at the resources below.
Tutorial Resources
Quick Start for Approvers
Travel and Expense Approval Basic Workflow: Roles and Responsibilities
Approval Action Matrix
Financial Review and Analysis Guide
Transaction Signs Quick Reference Guide
Deny vs Send Back
Temporary Approvers Quick Start
In this article, you will learn the steps to deny an expense report as an Expense Manager in the UGA Financial Management System.
First, log into the UGA Financial Management System.
Click the Approvals tile.
Note: The number in the bottom right corner of the tile indicates the number of documents awaiting your approval.
The Pending Approvals page is displayed. From this page, you can review and take actions on submitted documents.
To review an expense report, click the appropriate Expense Report.
Example shown here: Expense Report labeled "Food for Club Meeting".
The selected Expense Report summary page is displayed. Review the summary information.
Note: Your approval is not just a rubber stamp. As an approver, you are confirming to the best of your knowledge, that the transaction is appropriate, accurately classified with correct chartfields, and complete with respect to substantiating documentation. For additional guidance, please see the Financial Review and Analysis Guide in the Training Library.
To review notes made by the initiator or prior approvers, click the View Notes link.
To review the expense line details, click the appropriate expense line.
Example shown here: the O-Other Misc Expenses expense line.
The Approval Line Detail page is displayed. From this page, you can review the reported information, accounting details, and attached receipts (if applicable).
To review attached receipts, click the View Attachments link.
The View Attachments pop-up window is displayed.
To view the attachment in a new tab, click the Attached File link.
Note: Be sure the receipt agrees with the information in the expense report. Make sure the employee is not seeking reimbursement for unauthorized purchases such as personal gifts or alcohol . If receipts or documentation is missing or insufficient, use the Send Back feature to have the initiator add or correct the attachments.
Click the View Accounting link to review the accounting details.
The Accounting pop-up window is displayed showing the ChartField combination for the selected expense report.
Review the information to be sure that the amounts are reasonable and the ChartFields used are correct.
Click the Close button.
For this example, notice that this employee (a student worker or faculty member) is seeking reimbursement for a non-job related expense.
This is not accomplished with an expense report and should be denied.
You will repeat the review process for all expense lines in the report.
You can select individual expense lines to approve by clicking the checkbox in the appropriate expense line.
Example shown here: O-Other Misc Expenses checkbox.
You can also click the Select All checkbox to quickly mark all the expense lines.
When you deny an expense report or expense line(s), you send it back to the initiator. Deny "kills" the report and does not allow the initiator to resubmit.
Click the Deny button.
The Deny dialog box is displayed. You are required to enter appropriate reasoning for the denial into the Approver Comments field.
In this example, because they are submitting a non-job related expense, you would instruct them to register as a supplier and submit a payment request to be reimbursed for the food purchase.
With an appropriate comment entered, click the Submit button.
The Pending Approvals page is displayed once again. A green bar will appear across the top of the page, notifying you the report was successfully denied.
The initiator is notified via email of the denial.