Workflow Sample: Episode 510: "Post Facto Approval" in Expense Report Flow is Good Enough

"Because of the corporate card, it is difficult to grasp the entire expenses"

Business process improvement will reduce "wasteful work" and "time-consuming procedures". However, along with that, "checking by human" tends to be inadequate.

It sure will be a problem if "a loophole (fraud method) has been created as a result of promoting work efficiency" in high occurrence work of "Four major apps" which are;

Expense reimbursement flow
Procurement purchasing flow
Attendance report flow
Request for decision flow

However, there is often a trade-off relationship between "labor saving and unmanning" and "strengthening the check system." After all, must seek "compromise to suit each company".

The Expense reimbursement flow below is a monthly application type business flow that mainly aiming "reimbursing out-of-pocket expense".

In this example, it is devised so that approval can be obtained for expenses which do not require settlement as reimbursable out-of-pocket costs at the same time. This is an idea that it will eliminate advance approval about "payment with credit card" and "travel expenses receiving temporary payment".

The applicant himself will have the effect of not only "saving labor" in one application, but also "becoming aware of how much company expenses is using each month".

[Expense and Out-of-pocket costs report]

In this Workflow, the accounting department corrects the "out-of-pocket expense information entered by the applicant".

However, the application data (expense detail table) is automatically duplicated, and the contents of edits by the accounting department can be confirmed later. For example, in cases such as having corrected "account item", it will contribute to the applicant's future reference.

[Expense and Out-of-pocket costs report:"3. Confirmation / Adjustment" screen]

Incidentally, a peculiar "data type" referred to as "table type data" is used in this Workflow.

In Workflow products, several "data types" are defined according to business. Likewise in "Questetra BPM Suite", a Cloud-based Workflow, various "data types" such as "String type data" and "Date type data" are available.

* String type, Numeric type, Select type, Date type, DateTime type, File type, User type, Discussion type, Table type

And the "Table type data" is the only quirky data type that must also be defined for the "data type of each table column. (e.g. String column, Numeric column, Select column)

"Date column" appears in "Table type data" defined here.

This "date column" is a feature that becomes available on and after Questetra v 11.2 (2016 - 11 - 28). For inputting the table, the input support tool of "Calendar input" is displayed. It's quite useful.

In addition, with this Workflow, the "expense detail" applied by each employee is automatically aggregated into one Google Spreadsheet. Among various original automatic Steps that have been added, the fact that the applicant's email address to be automatically added to the leftmost column is a consideration to make the totaling work easier. It can be said that it is excellent.