Create a Pre-Approval Request

Pre-approvals allow you to obtain pre-authorization for an expense before it is incurred or a reservation is made—for example, for seminars or business development.

Create a New Pre-Approval

1. From the Dashboard, click the +CREATE button in the upper right corner of the Pre-Approval ribbon.

2. The types of fields and drop-downs on the Pre-Approval Header Entry screen will vary, based on your organization's configuration, but a Report Name will always be required. Other fields you may see include

• Start/End Dates
• Number of Days: Automatically determined by Start and End dates.
• Pay Me In: The currency in which you wish to be paid.
• Business Purpose: The business-related reason for the expenditure.
• Allocations: You may search the list by typing in the first digits of the number. You may also divide the request among multiple allocations by clicking ADD ALLOCATION.

Once you have filled out the basic header information, you will be able to add potential expenses just like you would when creating an expense report. You may even create multiple line items of the same expense type, such as two airfare line items or five taxi line items.

3. Click the + Button to add your first expense. The Add Pre-Approval Types screen will slide in from the right. It offers you several types of expenses.

4. Clicking on an expense-type tile takes you to the Add Expense screen for that type. Enter the required information and click SAVE.

Duplicate an Existing Pre-Approval

If your organization has configured this option, users with appropriate permissions may create copies of submitted pre-approval requests for other users. For example, your company’s travel coordinator could create a sample pre-approval and send it to multiple users as a template for creating their own pre-approval requests.

• Any attached images will not be copied over.

• The copy can be created for any other user to access, but it may only be submitted by the expense owner of the pre-approval that was copied.

1. To copy a pre-approval request, select it in your Submitted Pre-Approvals list or that of someone for whom you are working as a delegate and click DUPLICATE.

2. Select yourself or the user for whom you are duplicating the pre-approval.

3. Click DUPLICATE.

4. The copy will appear in the Draft Pre-Approvals list of the selected user. If the original name contained a date, it will be updated to today's date.

Attaching Images

You can attach images to a pre-approval while you are creating it or at any stage after it has been created. Images may be uploaded directly through the app or accessed in the Receipt Gallery. Only JPG, PDF, PNG, OFD, and TIFF files of up to 10 MB can be accepted when an image is attached via the Chrome River app.

To attach images to your pre-approval request, click anywhere in the header of the report to bring up the header preview. In the preview, scroll down to Attachments and click UPLOAD ATTACHMENTS,or just drag the image into that area.

You may also attach images to your pre-approval request this way directly from the Drafts and Recently Submitted lists.

Submitting a Pre-Approval

When you are ready to submit your pre-approval request, click the green SUBMIT button at the bottom of the entry screen.

Or, if the pre-approval request is not already open, go to your Drafts list, click on the desired request, and click SUBMIT on the preview screen.

You will be asked to verify the legitimacy of your pre-approval request on the Submit Confirmation screen. Click SUBMIT.

Pre-Approval Expense-Type Mapping

If your organization has implemented Expense-Type Mapping, you will only be able to apply approved pre-approval amounts to the expense types you originally listed in your pre-approval request.

For example, if you received pre-approval to spend $500 on airfare and $500 on hotel, but your resulting expense report includes $500 for airfare, $400 for hotel and $100 for transportation, you will only be able to use the pre-approval for the $500 airfare and the $400 hotel, leaving a $100 balance on the pre-approval request.