Approvals Workflow & Best Practices

Allocadia’s Approval feature allows you to ensure Marketing Activities follow a structured process between a submitter and an approver for activities requiring approval before planning continues. A submitter is an individual who enters and submits their desired amount, while an approver reviews and decides whether the submitted amount is Approved, Denied, or requires a revision. Approvals make it easy to have your bottoms-up plan reviewed and finalized before executing your activities.

Approval Workflow

The submitter and approver have dedicated actions that change the status of the amount, indicating where in the approval workflow the submitted amount resides. Each status can be filtered within the Activities Tab (formerly Budget Tab) in Allocadia or in Insights (formerly Analytics). An example of the overall workflow is as follows:

1. The submitter enters the value into the corresponding Plan or Forecast By default, all new values entered have planning status.
2. The submitter sends the Plan or Forecast amount for approval. When this occurs, the cell value becomes read-only and changes to pending status.
3. Several options are available when an amount is pending:
• 3a. The submitter can take back the amount before an approver has made a decision or if the requested amount has been denied by an approver. In this case, the amount’s status will revert to planning.
• 3b. The approver can send back the pending request with comments for revision. The status will then return to planning.
• 3c. The approver can accept the request and the status will become approved. The cell will remain read-only.
• 3d. The approver can deny the requested amount and the status of the field will become denied. The cell remains read-only.
4. For approved amounts, the submitter can submit a change request. Allocadia will continue to display the approved amount with a status of the pending change. The displayed value will only update if the change request is approved.

Best Practice Recommendations

The Approvals workflow is recommended in situations where an existing process for Approvals is in place. Key considerations when setting up Approvals are as follows:

1. Define where an internal process where an Approval is required. Choose between whether it should occur during fiscal year planning (Plan Columns) or after (Forecast Columns).
   Note: If Approvals are used during the Planning phase, it is recommended the Plan Columns are locked after the Planning phase is completed.
2. Define what Details Panel attributes are required to be filled out as part of the Approval
3. Determine who needs to follow this process. For example, which teams and/or workspaces should have the Approvals feature set up.
4. Establish who the Submitters and the Approvers are for each team or workspace.
   Note: Note: You can review changes to the status of the entered or submitted values in the Audit Trail to identify any discrepancies.