Approvals and notifications

Bitta Commission sends plan versions, statements, settlements and accounting postings through approval policies, so that a second person confirms every material decision. The same workflow area holds comments, in-product and email notifications, and the deadline job that escalates overdue work. A policy with one stage is part of the core. The Advanced approvals module adds policies with several ordered stages, for example the requester's manager first and finance above an amount, and automatic delegation.

A single-approver policy names one approver who can never be the requester.

Workflow setup holds the bulk limit, email switch, deadlines and statement windows.

Approval policies, including a two-stage settlement policy draft.

An approval policy card with its stages and the Retire policy action.

Before you start

• Creating policies and workflow setup requires the Bitta Commission Setup Administrator permission set. Approvers need the Bitta Commission Approver permission set and scope over the participants whose documents they decide. See Roles and permissions.
• Decide which user approves each document type. The approver must be an enabled Business Central user and must not be the person who submits the document.
• For settlement and accounting posting policies, the approvers of every stage need finance-wide access. If nobody a stage resolves has it, submission stops with BAA-WFL-SCOPE.
• Email notifications need a registered email account in Business Central.

Which documents need a policy

Document type	Without an effective policy
Plan	Submitting a plan version is refused with BAA-WFL-POLICY. See Plans, versions, and assignments.
Statement	Submitting a statement is refused with BAA-WFL-POLICY. See Participant and manager statements.
Settlement	Submitting a settlement approves it directly. See Settlements and pay groups.
Accounting posting	Submitting an accounting proposal is refused with BAA-WFL-POLICY. See Accounting and posting.

Exactly one policy can be effective for a document type on a given date.

Create a single-approver policy

1. Open Commission Approval Policies and choose Create single-approver policy.
2. On Create Commission Approval Policy, fill in the fields:

Field	What it does
Policy code, Description	Identify the policy.
Document type	Plan, Statement, Settlement or Accounting posting.
Effective from, Effective through	The dates the policy applies. Leave the end blank for no end date. Effective policies for the same document type cannot overlap.
Approver user	The user who approves. The requester can never approve their own document.
Delegation policy	Who receives an assignment the approver has not acted on: SECURITY-DELEGATE (the approver's delegated security assignment, the default), USER-SETUP-SUBSTITUTE (the approver's User Setup substitute), NONE, or a user security ID.
Delegate after	How long an assignment may wait before it is delegated automatically, for example 2D, counted in working days of the company base calendar. Leave blank to never delegate automatically.

1. Choose OK. The policy is created and activated.

Choose Approval stages to review the stages of a policy: the approver type, approver, Minimum Approvals, Prohibit Self Approval, effective dates, Delegation After and Escalation After.

Build a policy with several stages

Use a policy draft when a document needs more than one approver, or when an approval should only be needed above an amount. You build the draft stage by stage, validate it and activate it.

1. Open Commission Approval Policies and choose New policy draft.
2. On New Commission Approval Policy Draft, fill in the fields:

Field	What it does
Policy code, Description	Identify the policy. An existing policy code gets its next version.
Document type	Plan, Statement, Settlement or Accounting posting.
Effective from, Effective through	The dates the policy applies. Effective policies for the same document type cannot overlap.
Response SLA	The response deadline for stages without an escalation delay of their own, for example 3D, counted in working days of the company base calendar.
Escalate to user	Who receives overdue assignments. Leave blank to escalate to the approver's User Setup approver.
Delegation policy	Who receives an assignment the approver has not acted on within the stage delegation delay, as for a single-approver policy.

1. Choose OK. The Commission Approval Policy card opens with the draft. Its Status Code is DRAFT.
2. Choose Add stage, fill in Add Commission Approval Stage and choose OK. Repeat for each stage. Stages are numbered in the order you add them.
3. To take a stage out, select it in Stages and choose Remove stage. The later stages move up one position.
4. Choose Validate to check the draft, then choose Activate.

Stage field	What it does
Stage type	How the stage finds its approvers. See the next table.
Minimum approvals	How many different users must approve before the request moves on. A stage with one named user needs exactly one.
Threshold amount	The amount from which the stage applies. Zero means the stage always applies.
Escalate after	The response deadline of this stage, for example 3D. Overdue assignments are escalated by the workflow deadline job. Blank uses the policy Response SLA.
Delegate after	How long an assignment may wait before it is delegated automatically. Blank never delegates automatically.

Stage type	Who approves
Specific user	The enabled user in Approver user.
Approval queue	The users with an active commission security assignment of scope type QUEUE and the queue code you enter.
Manager of requester	The users linked to the manager of the requester's primary position.
Commission role	The users with an active security assignment of the commission role.
Workflow user group	The members of the Business Central workflow user group.
Approval administrators	The users marked as approval administrators in User Setup.
Hierarchy level	The participant a chosen number of levels above the requester in an active commission hierarchy. Build hierarchies in the Commission Hierarchy Editor; see Positions, teams, and hierarchies.

How stages route a request

• Stages are reached in ascending order. A stage is complete when it has its minimum approvals, and then the next stage that applies opens. The last approval completes the request.
• A stage with a threshold applies only when the document amount is at or above the threshold: the settled amount of a statement, the payable amount of a settlement, or the debit amount of an accounting proposal. Otherwise the stage is skipped, and the skip is recorded with the request.
• At least one stage must have no threshold, so that every request has an approver.
• Plan versions carry no amount, so the stages of a plan policy cannot have a threshold.
• Every stage prohibits self approval. The requester can never approve or reject any stage, and a stage that would route to the requester is refused at submission with BAA-WFL-SELFAPPROVAL.

Validate and Activate refuse a draft without stages or without a stage that always applies (BAA-WFL-POLICY-STAGES), and a draft whose dates overlap another active policy for the same document type (BAA-WFL-POLICY-OVERLAP). A later version of the same policy can be activated as the replacement of the version it overlaps; see Change an active policy.

Change an active policy

An active policy version and its stages never change. You can only end an active version: replace it with a later version of the same policy, or retire it on an end date. Both keep the version's stages, definition and definition hash exactly as published. Only its last effective date changes.

To replace a version:

1. Select the policy and choose New version, in the list or on the card. The stages are copied into a new draft version of the same policy code with the dates you choose.
2. Choose an Effective from date after the current version's first effective date. If the current version has an end date, you can instead start the new version the day after it ends.
3. Adjust the stages, then choose Validate.
4. Choose Activate. If the new version overlaps an active version of the same policy, the confirmation explains that it is activated as the replacement: the earlier version ends on the day before the new version starts. The earlier version's end date and the new version's activation happen together, in one step.

This is how you replace a policy that has no end date, such as the default plan policy or a policy created with Create single-approver policy. A replacement that does not start after the version it replaces is refused with BAA-WFL-POLICY-REPLACE. Replacement only works between versions of the same policy code; a draft of another policy code that overlaps an active policy is still refused with BAA-WFL-POLICY-OVERLAP.

To retire a version without a replacement:

1. Open the active version and choose Retire policy, on the card or in the list.
2. Enter the Last effective date and a Reason, and choose OK.
3. Read the confirmation and confirm.

The version routes new requests up to and including the last effective date. From the next day, new requests of that document type need another effective policy; see the table under Which documents need a policy. The last effective date must be on or after the version's first effective date and no earlier than yesterday. You can bring an end date forward later, but never move it back. Retiring is refused with BAA-WFL-POLICY-RETIRE if these rules are not met or the reason is blank.

Routing follows the request date: a request submitted before the end date routes under the earlier version, and a request submitted from the replacement's start routes under the new version. Requests already submitted under a version that is replaced or retired keep that version and finish under it. An ended version keeps the status ACTIVE until its end date, and the End of use section of its card shows whether it was RETIRED or SUPERSEDED, the version that replaced it, the reason, and the end date it was published with.

Delete draft removes a draft you no longer need.

Each draft change, activation, replacement and retirement is recorded in the audit trail. A replacement writes one entry for the new version and one for the version it ends. A change is refused with BAA-WFL-POLICY-STALE if the policy changed after you opened it; refresh the page and try again. Only the Bitta Commission Setup Administrator permission set can replace or retire a policy.

Decide approvals

Approvers have two pages:

• My Commission Approvals lists the assignments waiting for you, with Document type, Document, Awaiting your decision, Stage No., Required Approvals, Normalized Amount, Deadline At and Queue Code. Use Filter by team or Filter by period to focus the list, and Clear team and period filter to reset it.
• Commission Approval Work Queue handles one request at a time. The Next step column tells you what to do: approve or reject plans and statements right here, or choose Review document and use the approval actions on a settlement or accounting proposal.

To decide one request:

1. Select it and choose Approve or Reject (or open the document with Review document).
2. In Commission Approval Decision, enter the Decision Reason Code and an optional Decision Comment. Only the hash of the comment is retained with the decision.
3. Choose OK.

With the Advanced approvals module on, Delegate in the work queue passes a plan approval request to another user with effective authority.

Bulk approval

1. In My Commission Approvals, select several open assignments.
2. Choose Approve selected or Reject selected and enter one reason code.
3. Bulk Approval Results shows each request as approved, rejected, skipped or failed, with the reason in Outcome Detail.

Each request is decided and committed separately, so one failure does not undo the others. Requests above Bulk Approval Amount Limit in Commission Workflow Setup are skipped and must be decided individually (BAA-WFL-BULK-LIMIT). Zero means no limit.

Segregation of duties

• The requester cannot approve their own request, in any stage (BAA-WFL-SELFAPPROVAL).
• A user who has already decided a request cannot decide it again (BAA-WFL-SEGREGATION).
• If a stage cannot resolve an eligible approver, submission stops with BAA-WFL-ROUTING.
• An approval is bound to the exact document version and hash. If the document changes, the request becomes stale (BAA-WFL-STALE) and must be submitted again.

Comments

Statements, disputes, settlements, plan versions, manager statements, source facts, credit entries and earnings have a Comments FactBox.

• Add comment posts a comment with your user name and the time. Type @ followed by a user name, or fill in Mention User, to notify someone.
• Reply answers in the thread of the selected comment.
• Attach document attaches a file of up to 10 MB with a comment. Download attachment checks the file against its recorded hash before downloading.

Comments cannot be edited afterwards and never change the hash of the record they describe.

Notifications

The app raises notifications for these events: Statement Delivered, Dispute Assigned, Approval Requested, Settlement Frozen, Payment Exported, Dispute Escalated, Comment Mention, Plan Available, Acknowledgement Due, Approval Rejected, Dispute Updated, Payment Hold Applied, Payment Hold Released and Correction Processed.

Set up notification rules

1. Open Commission Notification Rules and add a line.
2. Choose the Event and the Recipient Type: Context Owner (the natural recipient), User (fill in Recipient User Name) or Role (fill in Recipient Role Code; every active user scope with that commission role is notified).
3. Choose the Channel: In-Product for a Business Central notification, or Email to hand the message to the Email Outbox.
4. Select Enabled.

In Commission Workflow Setup, Notify Default Recipients sends an in-product notification to the natural recipient when no rule exists for an event, and Email Notifications Enabled allows Email rules to use the Email Outbox. Email failures are logged and never block the transaction that raised them.

Commission Notification Log shows every notification with its Status (Queued, Displayed, Email Queued, Failed or Skipped), channel, recipient, message and Outcome Detail. Choose Open record to open the record it refers to. The Commission Notifications part on the role center shows your pending count.

Deadlines and escalation

Field in Commission Workflow Setup	What it does
Escalate Overdue Approvals	The deadline job escalates overdue approval assignments to the policy escalation owner.
Escalate Overdue Disputes	The deadline job escalates overdue disputes to the participant's manager.
Default Dispute SLA Hours	Response hours when a dispute category has no SLA row.

Choose Create deadline job to create the hourly job queue entry "Bitta Commission workflow deadlines (approval and dispute SLA)". It is created on hold; activate it in Job Queue Entries. Each run delegates stalled assignments, escalates overdue work, records deemed statement acceptance and sends acknowledgement reminders. Evaluate deadlines now runs the same evaluation immediately. Escalation appends evidence and reassigns ownership. It never changes a recorded due date or decision time.

Related pages

• Roles and permissions
• Disputes and holds
• Audit and security
• Job queues, monitoring, and diagnostics