Understand Fund Approvals in Control Center

This section describes some general concepts related to a fund approval hierarchy.

Understand Approval Statuses

Certain edit tests require manual business review, while other edit tests do not require manual business review. An edit test result can display the following statuses in Control Center:

• Cleared. Cleared results include results systematically cleared or results that passed user-defined tolerances.
• Raised-Approved. Approved results were reviewed and manually approved, with notes, by an Eagle user.
• Raised-Unapproved. Unapproved results are edit tests that are still raised and require manual or systematic attention.
• N/A, N/A or not applicable, indicates that the edit test is not defined for that approval role level.

Understand User Roles

When you create a fund approval hierarchy, you can set up user roles that correspond to the available approval levels from 1 to 4. You can change the role names and descriptions. The default roles provided include:

• Annotator (Role 0), used only with dual approval
• Preparer (Role 1)
• Reviewer (Role 2)
• Accounting Manager (Role 3)
• Unit Manager (Role 4)

You can change the role name and description for your business. You do not need to use all the levels in your hierarchy. After you create user roles, you can assign specific user roles to specific Eagle users. Once you assign a user role to an Eagle user, that Eagle user can approve edits that break a tolerance at their assigned approval role level or at a lower level. For more information, see Manage User Roles and Set Up Eagle Users for a Fund Approval Hierarchy.

Understand the Highest Approval Level That an Edit Test Requires

At a minimum, the systematic accounting checks that Control Center provides demand one level of business approval as long as the user role level meets, or is above, the error tolerance level that was raised. Within each edit test that uses the fund approval hierarchy, you can configure up to four approval levels required for business review. Eagle provides a set of FAH edit tests designed for use with a fund approval hierarchy. For tolerance related edit tests, you can configure separate and distinct thresholds for each role level. You can set up and change the approval levels based on your current and future business needs. You can also set up error severity based on role level. For more information, see Manage Approval Levels for FAH Edit Tests.

Understand Approving Edits at Different Levels

When you use a fund approval hierarchy, Control Center allows you to approve edits in a sequential role level manner. Control Center disables higher level approvals until the lower level approvals are complete. As a result, an edit test result can show multiple approval statuses that correspond to different required approval levels. For example, say you require four levels of business approval for an edit test. The lowest reviewer in the hierarchy reviewed and approved the edit, but the higher reviewers in the hierarchy did not yet review the edit. In this case the edit has an Approved status at the lowest level of the fund approval hierarchy and it has an Unapproved status at the three higher levels of the fund approval hierarchy. The fund approval hierarchy lets you define a minimum requirement by user role level, with more important edits needing approval by higher level users. You do not have to approve level by level by multiple users when you use a fund approval hierarchy.

The following figure shows the approval statuses you can view for an edit test result in Control Center. In this example, the Eagle client uses the dual approval process, which includes use of the Annotator user role. The default user role names appear at column headings in this example. If you change the role names, your role names appear instead. The first row shows a result approved by an Eagle user at the Annotator level and unapproved by an Eagle user at the Preparer level. This level 1 dual approval edit test result does not require approvals at a level higher than Preparer. The second row shows a result approved at both the Annotator and Preparer levels.

Understand Approvals for Sign-Off Edits

A user-level option allow Eagle users with certain rights the ability to approve Sign-Off edits (Transaction, Valuation and Audit Sign off edits), similar to the allowance to clear prior period edits. Status sign-off edit tests allow the system to close the fund by clearing after all other raised edit tests are cleared or approved. For more information, see Manage Status Sign-Offs.

Understand Approval Options

When you approve or unapprove edit test results, you can approve one or more results at a time. You can approve results at a single approval level or at multiple approval levels, based on your rights in User Administration. The approval and unapproval options follow:

• Approve As, Allows you to approve one or more selected edits at a specified approval role level. For example, you approve the edits as a Preparer (Role 1). 
• Approve All As. Allows you to approve all edits shown on the page at a specified approval role level.
• Final Approval. Allows you to approve one or more edits at all role levels.
  You can press the CTL key to select multiple rows. This option allows managers at upper levels of the fund approval hierarchy to approve an edit at multiple role levels at once, rather than approve at one level at a time in sequence
• Final Approval of All. Allows you to fully approve one or more edits, approving all edits shown on the page in the validation results. This option bypasses role-level requirements. 
• Unappprove As. Allows you to unapprove one or more selected approved edits at a specified approval role level. For example, you unapprove the edits as a Preparer (Role 1). 
• Unappprove All As. Allows you to unapprove all the approved edits at a specified role level. This option is not available when you use dual approval. 

Understand the Approval History

Control Center allows you to use the Show Approval History option to see a list of the approvals and unapprovals for a selected edit test result. You can view the date of the approval or unapproval, the user name of the people who approved or unapproved the results, and the approval role level they used for the approval.