Review, approve, or return plans or Cost Objects

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When Department Owners, Business Unit Owners, and (if enabled) Project Owners, or Service Owners submit their plan or forecasts for their respective Cost Objects, the submitted plans are immediately visible on the All Plan Sections pages. See Edit the Company Profile and Submit a plan or forecast for more information. Owners can then review the Cost Center plan and approve it or return it to the budget owner for further work.

Approval process

The Cost Object Permissions dimension determines who can perform actions with Cost Objects. See Manage Cost Object Permissions reference data for more information. The Cost Object Permissions edit levels include the following:

Edit Level	View	Edit	Submit	Approve	Reject
Owner	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes, if the Owner is at a Group Cost Object	Yes, if the Owner is at a Group Cost Object
Edit and Submit	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No
View Only	Yes	No	No	No	No

If Permissions are granted at a group cost object level, all permissions apply to any child Cost Objects.

Note: Admin and Budget Process Owner role have "Owner" edit level at the highest level of the hierarchy even if they are not listed in the Cost Object Permissions hierarchy. Users must have at least the Cost Center Owner role to have Owner or Edit & Submit edit levels.

Example

If your department hierarchy includes multiple levels, you may want to flatten the approval workflow. You can configure the approval hierarchy to skip certain levels, so that the departments within the node you skip will roll up to the next-level owner. In the following image, Group E, Group F, and Group H are "skip" nodes. The departments within those groups would be approved by the next level owner: plan for Department D and Department E would be approved by the owner of Group B.

View and manage submitted plans

Cost Center Owners can approve or reject plans at any time. If multiple users are assigned as owners, only one user needs to approve plans. If a higher-level owner approves a plan, lower levels are then auto approved.

In the plan menus at the top right, select a plan, a Cost Object category, and a cost object or cost object group.
Learn more about navigating in Planning
Navigate to Planning > Status. Select Include View-Only Cost Objects to include Cost Objects with view-only permissions.
Note: The Enforce View Permissions option must be enabled. See Edit the Company Profile.
From the Status view, users can submit, approve, and return the cost objects. There are two ways to perform those actions:
- Actions column - In the Status view, in the Actions column, in a row of a cost object or a group cost object, select Approve, Return, or Submit.
  These actions can be performed from the leaf cost object level and the group cost object level. When an action is performed at the group cost object level, both leaf cost object and group cost object are updated.
  
  Read more about how certain actions affect leaf and group cost objects
- Bulk actions – In the Status view, in the first column, select cost objects using the checkboxes. From the Actions dropdown above the table, select Approve Selected, Return Selected, or Submit Selected to perform bulk action on the selected cost objects.
  Group level cost objects are not affected by the bulk actions.
- To submit plans to the budget owner or Cost Center Owner, select the items, select Actions, and select Submit Selected. You can also select Submit in the row for each individual line item.
- To approve plans, select the items, select Actions, and select Approve Selected.
- To request the budget owner or Cost Center Owner to modify a submitted plan or plans, select the items, select Actions, and select Return Selected.

When all budgets are submitted, select Finalize Plan.

Note:

If multiple users share the same approval level, only one needs to approve plans.
If a higher-level owner approves a plan, lower levels are automatically approved.

Approval Hierarchy Actions

The following table describes the Actions and the resulting behavior in Status for Cost Objects:

Action	Behavior at Leaf Cost Object	Behavior at Group Cost Object
Submit	Marks the Cost Object as "Submitted" Creates a new non-editable snapshot of the submitted Cost Object Locks current Cost Object lines from being edited	Marks all child leaf Cost Objects as "Approved" Creates a new non-editable snapshot of all child leaf Cost Objects Any Child leaf Cost Object already in Approved Status will be unaffected
Approve	Marks the Cost Object as "Approved" Note: Only leaf Cost Objects in "Submitted" status will have this option	Marks the Group Cost Object as "Approved" Marks any child leaf Cost Object in "Submitted" status as "Approved"
Reject	Marks the Cost Object as "Rejected"or "Returned" Note: Only leaf Cost Objects in "Submitted" or "Approved" status will have this option	Marks the Group Cost Object as "Rejected" or "Returned" Any child leaf Cost Object in "Submitted" or "Approved" status will be unaffected, unless the cost object owner decides otherwise.

Action

Behavior at Leaf Cost Object

Behavior at Group Cost Object

Submit

Marks the Cost Object as "Submitted"

Creates a new non-editable snapshot of the submitted Cost Object

Locks current Cost Object lines from being edited

Marks all child leaf Cost Objects as "Approved"

Creates a new non-editable snapshot of all child leaf Cost Objects

Any Child leaf Cost Object already in Approved Status will be unaffected

Approve

Marks the Cost Object as "Approved"

Note: Only leaf Cost Objects in "Submitted" status will have this option

Marks the Group Cost Object as "Approved"

Marks any child leaf Cost Object in "Submitted" status as "Approved"

Reject

Marks the Cost Object as "Rejected"or "Returned"

Note: Only leaf Cost Objects in "Submitted" or "Approved" status will have this option

Marks the Group Cost Object as "Rejected" or "Returned"

Any child leaf Cost Object in "Submitted" or "Approved" status will be unaffected, unless the cost object owner decides otherwise.

Snapshots

A snapshot is a non-editable copy of a line item in an open plan. Users can compare a plan to a snapshot.

A snapshot is taken automatically when one of the following occurs:

A plan is submitted.
The status of a plan changes from New to Open.

You can use snapshots when comparing plans.

See Compare versions or plans

When a snapshot is being taken at the cost object level, that cost object cannot be edited.

Take a snapshot manually

Open the left-hand navigation pane and select Planning > Plans.
From the Plans list, select a plan.
In the top-right corner, in the section menu, select a cost object category.
In the top-right corner, in the sub-section menu, select a cost object.
Select a line-item table view.
From the snapshot dropdown, select Save Snapshot.
Enter the name of the snapshot.
Select Create.

Access snapshots

Open the left-hand navigation pane and select Planning > Plans.
From the Plans list, select a plan.
In the top-right corner, in the section menu, select a cost object category.
In the top-right corner, in the sub-section menu, select a cost object.
Select the snapshot dropdown.