Field descriptions: Journal entry approvals

Journal entry approvals ensure that the right users monitor and approve appropriate journal entries before they're posted.

Multi-entity companies: Require approval of journal transactions entered at the top level, entity level, or both:

  • Top-level transactions: To require approval for journal transactions entered at the top level, enable journal entry approval and assign approvers at the top level. Journal entry approval that you set up at the entity level will be ignored.
  • Entity-level transactions: To require approval for journal transactions entered at the entity level, enable journal entry approval and assign approvers at the entity level. If you do not, we check if you've enabled approval and assigned approvers at the top level. If you enable and assign at both levels, Intacct uses the entity-level assignments.
Journal entry approvals field descriptions
Field Description

Enable journal entry approvals

To require that all transactions in a particular journal get approved before posting, select Enable journal entry approvals. (Transactions from a subledger are automatically posted to a journal.)

Select each journal that requires approvals, and select who needs to approve the transactions for each journal.

Admin approver

To have a backup person available to approve any transaction, select an Admin approver.

Select a person outside your existing approvers: you want someone who can step in if a journal's assigned approver is unavailable.

To add someone to the list of choices, give an Admin or Business user permission to Approve Journal Entries in the General Ledger application.

Submitter can approve own entries

To allow users to approve their own transactions, select Submitter can approve own entries.

To require that a separate user reviews an approver's transactions in a journal, clear Submitter can approve own entries. Then select a Substitute Approver for the journal.

Enable delegation

Allows approvers to delegate their approval responsibility to assigned delegates who can approve on their behalf.

Manage delegates Appears when Enable delegation is selected. Select Manage to assign and manage delegate approvers for each of your approvers.
Approvers For each journal, select an approver. If the submitter cannot approve their own transactions, a substitute approver option becomes available. This substitute approver is notified when the submitter cannot self-approve.
Outlier Assistant Enables the Outlier Assistant, which changes the workflow, returning flagged transactions to the submitter for re-evaluation instead of flagging the transaction to the Approver.
Email notification frequency

For each journal using approvals, select the frequency with which you want to receive notifications that a submission is waiting. Select from the following options:

  • None: do not send an email notification. This is the default selection.
  • Individual transactions: every time a transaction approval is requested.
  • Daily summary: once a day, sent just after the end of the day. It includes all the activity that has occurred after the last notification.
  • Weekly summary: once a week, sent at the start of the last workday of the week. This includes all the activity that’s occurred after the last notification.
  • Monthly summary: at the end of the month, sent at the start of the last workday of the month. It includes all the activity that has occurred after the last notification.

The actual time or day of the week or month that you’re sent the notification email is based on your company calendar.

For each transaction needing approval, the email includes a link to review the transaction, and these details:

  • Name of person who submitted the transaction
  • Date submitted
  • Journal
  • Transaction no.
  • Description
If the same approver is assigned to multiple journals, they’ll receive one notification per journal with the journal name included.
Outlier Detection customization If the default outlier detection configuration does not match your company’s needs, you can make per-journal adjustments to the currency, materiality, and dimension priority.

When an approval request is received, the request can be processed in one of two ways, depending on the submitter's permissions.

If the submitter cannot approve their own entries

  • If the approver submits a transaction, an email is sent to the substitute approver because the approver cannot approve their own transactions. If the approver is a user group, the submitter cannot be a member of the group.
  • If someone other than the approver submits a transaction, an email is sent to the Approver.
  • If the substitute approver submits a transaction, an email is sent to the Approver.

If the submitter can approve their own entries:

  • If the Approver submits a transaction, it's automatically approved and no notification is sent.
  • If another person submits a transaction, an email is sent to the Approver.
  • If the substitute approver submits a transaction, no email is sent, or email is sent if there are further approvals needed.