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Setting Up Approval Authority

Approval Authority Setup feature

You can use the Approval Authority Setup feature to structure the credit approval process, and to enable or disable editing and deleting of approved credit lines.

Using the Approval Authority feature, you can define the following structure for the approval process used by the Credit Line feature:

  • Ranges for credit transaction amounts, and the number of concurrences required for each range. Concurrences are additional approvals entered after the first user approves the credit line. eCredit does not mark the credit line as approved until the required number of approvals has been entered. You can specify between 1 and 99 additional approvals for each transaction range.

  • Method used to notify primary or secondary managers. Your automated process can notify the manager by automatically creating a work queue task, sending an e-mail, or both these methods. For the eCredit standard process this notification occurs when the managers' subordinates are unable to approve a credit line because they have insufficient approval authority, or when a credit line requires an additional approval.

When setting up transaction amount ranges, it is important that the ranges include all transaction amounts that users have sufficient authority to approve. This ensures that transactions are approved in the manner that you intend. For upper ranges, you need to enter an amount that is equal to or greater than the highest approval authority assigned to any user.

It is also important that ranges do not have any gaps between them. If a transaction amount entered by an analyst does not fit into any of the ranges that you define, eCredit approves the credit transaction after validating that the user who approves the credit line has sufficient approval authority. Only this single approval is required.

Note:  If you set up eCredit to require more than one approval for a credit line, analysts must update credit request decisions using the Credit Line feature of the Customer module. They cannot use the Decision screen to update credit requests.

When adding a user to eCredit, the system administrator specifies the primary and secondary manager for the user. When you set the notification method, eCredit uses the method you select to notify the user's primary manager when the user is not able to approve a credit line, because they do not have sufficient approval authority. The secondary manager is contacted if the primary manager's account is inactive. Your automated process for the Credit Line feature can also be defined to notify analysts or managers when additional approvals are required.

You can add, modify, or delete approval authority ranges.

About setting up the ability to edit and delete approved credit lines

The Approval Authority Setup feature includes two selection boxes that you use to enable or disable users' ability to delete and edit approved credit lines.  

The following describes the selections for deleting approved credit lines:

  • If you clear the selection from the Delete Approved Credit Line check box, users cannot delete a credit line once it has been approved, even if the credit line is expired and even if the user's role includes the capability to delete credit lines.

  • If you select the Delete Approved Credit Line check box, users can delete an approved credit line if the credit line is expired, and if the user's role includes the capability to delete credit lines.

The selections for the Delete Approved Credit Lines check box do not affect users' ability to delete credit lines that have not been approved. Users can delete credit lines that have not been approved as long as their user role includes the capability to delete credit lines.

Note:  The following credit lines cannot be deleted even if the credit line is expired:

  • To maintain data integrity, credit lines that were processed and approved through the Automated Decisions module cannot be deleted even if the credit line is expired.

  • Credit lines created by an allocation from a parent customer (credit lines with Type of Allocated) cannot be deleted. The only way to delete these credit lines is to delete the allocation from the parent credit line. More See "Deleting All Allocations from a Credit Line."

The following describes the selections for editing approved credit lines:

  • If you clear the selection from the Edit Approved Credit Line check box, users cannot edit an approved credit line, regardless of their role capabilities. Editing includes changes to any credit line information, including comments or attachments.

  • If you select the Edit Approved Credit Lines check box, users can edit an approved credit line if the users' approval authority is equal to or greater than the credit line's Approved Amount and if the user is assigned to a role that includes the capability to edit credit lines.

Enabling customers to Rely on Self

You can set up eCredit so that customers can rely on self. If Rely on Self is selected, then users with the appropriate role capabilities can create credit lines for customers that have an allocation from a parent's credit line. If the Rely on Self check box is not selected, then users can create credit lines for customer only if that customer does not have an allocation from a parent's credit line. This means that accounts that rely on self are able to have one effective credit line of their own and one or more allocations from their parent account.

If you set up eCredit to enable customers to rely on self, then you must select the Disable Overlapping Credit Lines check box.

Disable overlapping credit lines

You can set up eCredit to disable multiple effective credit lines. If you have set up eCredit to enable customers to rely on self, then you must select the Disable Overlapping Credit Lines check box.

If you do not allow multiple effective credit lines and an analyst or user with the appropriate role capabilities attempts to approve a credit line when there is already an effective one, the user is prevented from saving the credit line.

Disable approval authority validation for expiring credit lines

By default, eCredit validates that a user's Approval Authority is greater than or equal to the approved credit line amount before expiring a credit line. If you want to disable this validation so that any user whose role includes the expire capability can expire a credit line, select the Disable authority limit validation for expiring approved credit line check box.

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