You can use cost objects to determine who is responsible for approving the travel request. When a booker selects a cost object for the trip during checkout, the cost object may determine the approver to receive the approval request.

Note: It is recommended you set up cost object approvers for all cost objects that you use in travel to ensure travel requests are approved correctly.

To approve travel requests by cost objects, you need to:

1. Assign a default approver in the cost object
2. Assign cost object approver as the approver

Assigning a default approver in the cost object

1. Go to Settings > Cost management > Cost objects.
2. Click Add cost object or edit and existing one.

3. In the Settings tab, for Approver, select the person who is responsible for all travel request approvals for this cost object.

   

4. Click Save.

Assigning a cost object approver as the approver

Once cost objects are correctly configured with a cost object approver, you can build an approval process that routes travel requests to those approvers. This tells Perk to automatically request approval from the approver linked to the cost object selected by the booker in the trip checkout.

1. Go to Settings > Travel management > Approval processes.
2. Create a new approval process (or edit an existing one).
3. Scroll down to Who is the approval process for? and add the people the approval process applies to.
4. Scroll down to Who should approve their trip?

5. In the Approver dropdown list, select Cost object approver.

   

6. Click Save.

Caution: Make sure you have assigned an approver in the cost object. Otherwise, if the approval rule uses a cost object approver and none is found, approval is escalated to the account admin.

Possible cost object approval configuration

There are several scenarios that you can set up to determine how Perk chooses the approver:

1. Set up the approval process to take the cost object approver, without choosing any specific cost object. In this case, the approval applies to every trip that has a cost object. The approver is taken from the cost object configuration.
2. Set up the approval process to take the cost object approver and use it for a specific cost object. In this case, the approver is taken from the cost object configuration for that specific cost object.
3. Set up the approval process to take a specific person and use it for a specific cost object. In this case, the approver is taken from the approval process, not the cost object configuration.

You can set up an approval process for the entire account or a specific group of people where you determine the person to approve as the cost object approver:

• If the booker doesn’t select any cost object for the trip, the approval rule is ignored as it does not apply.
• If the booker selects a cost object for the trip, but that cost object doesn’t have a default approver, the approval rule can’t be applied as Perk can’t identify the approver. In this case, Perk notifies and request approval from account admins instead.

Any other approval rules that may have been set up in the approval process still apply.