A cost object approval workflow routes an expense to the approver of the cost object selected on the expense. It ensures that the budget holder or responsible person for that cost object reviews and approves the expense before it moves further in the process.

Approving expenses using a cost object workflow

When an employee submits an expense that contains a cost object (for example, a cost center, project, or department), Perk identifies the assigned approver of that cost object and sends the expense to them for approval. If multiple approvers exist, all relevant approvers can be included.

This workflow also supports escalation logic. For example:

• If the submitter is also the cost object approver, the approval can automatically escalate to the parent cost object approver to avoid self-approval.
• If an expense exceeds the approval limit of the assigned person, the workflow can escalate to the next level in the cost object hierarchy.

These escalation rules ensure that expenses are always reviewed by someone with the appropriate authority.

Caution: Auto-approval is not supported in custom workflows that use cost object approval. If auto-approval is required, a standard approval flow must be used instead

Using a cost object workflow

This workflow is available as a template in the workflow designer. Select Cost object approval. You can adjust the settings or add additional steps in the flow, as required.