Set up a travel approval process by cost object

You can use cost objects to determine who is responsible for approving the travel request. When a booker selects a cost object at checkout, Perk routes the approval request to the cost object's approvers — the preferred approver and any additional approvers you've configured. Any one of them can approve the trip. You can restrict approval rules to a specific cost object or use it for all cost objects.

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 approvers in the cost object.
  2. Assign cost object approver as the approver.

Assigning approvers in the cost object

  1. Go to Settings > Cost management > Cost objects.
  2. Click Add cost object or edit an existing one.
  3. In the Approval step, select a preferred approver.
  4. (Optional) Add additional approvers.
  5. Click Save.

See Assign a cost object approver.

Assigning a cost object approver as the approver

Once cost objects are correctly configured, 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.
Make sure you have assigned approvers in the cost object. Make sure at least a preferred approver is assigned. Additional approvers can't be set without a preferred approver. Otherwise, if the approval rule uses a cost object approver and none is found, approval is escalated to the account admin.

Multi-step approval with additional approvers

If your approval process has multiple steps and uses the cost object approver in one slot, Perk creates a separate approval path for each additional approver in that slot. The other approver in the rule stays the same. For example, with a line manager + cost object approver rule, each additional cost object approver gets their own parallel step with the same line manager.

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.

Was this article helpful?