Approving Planning or Forecasting

Note

The approval is an optional function. It may not be enabled at all in your company or it may be enabled only for a part of the investment plans. If you have any questions, please contact your system administrator.

In Sheila's company, planning is checked according to the 4-eyes principle. Sheila creates the marketing investments and enters the planned spents. After she has finished all edits, Sheila sends the planned spents for approval.

John, a colleague of Sheila's who is authorized to approve, sees Sheila's request on the Budget tab. The request is displayed in red in the Approvals column. John clicks on the red entry to open the edit interface. There, John decides on the request. He can approve, deny, or send the amount back for reprocessing.

After John has decided, Sheila can see his decisions in her acivity plan. Sheila must then rework the spends that have not been approved. Her goal is to get all the spends approved.

This process can also be used for forecasting.

Marketers can easily create investments and send the planned or forecasted spend for approval when required. At a quick glance, Marketers can view the status of their requests on the Budget Grid. The coloured bar in line with the cell value identifies which investments require approval and will change based on the status of the approval.

  • Planning – The orange bar indicates that the plan value the submitter entered into the corresponding column has not yet been submitted for approval, and the investment is still in the planning phase. By default, all new values entered have the Planning status.

  • Pending – The purple bar denotes the submitter has sent the plan amount for approval, and the request is pending. When the amount is submitted for approval, the cell value becomes read-only and changes to the Pending status.
    Note: Line items and placeholders cannot be deleted in this state and no properties can be edited on the Details panel.

  • Approved – The green bar confirms an approval. The request has been accepted by someone with access to approve and the cell remains read-only. A change request can be made if needed, however, the approved amount will only be updated if the change request is accepted. Otherwise, the approved amount will be displayed with a status of the pending change.
    Note: Line items and placeholders cannot be deleted in this state and no properties can be edited on the Details panel.

  • Denied - The red bar indicates the amount requested has been denied and needs to be adjusted accordingly before resubmitting. Before adjusting, the requesting user must set the cell to the Planning state.
    Note: Line items and placeholders cannot be deleted in this state and no properties can be edited on the Details panel.