Communication

Effective communication is essential for smooth expense reporting and approval processes. Notification settings can easily be managed and customized within the expense reporting system to ensure that Submitters, Approvers, and Accounting users receive timely and relevant updates. By configuring these notifications appropriately, your organization can enhance workflow transparency and keep everyone informed at each stage.

Managing Expense Report Notifications

By default, users' notification preferences are turned off. After Submitters, Approvers, and Accounting users complete training, Admins can enable notifications. This ensures users understand which notifications they will receive and when.

Steps to Update Expense Report Notifications

1. Access the Settings Manager:
   From the top of your screen, go to the Settings Manager module.
   
2. Open Communication Settings:
   Click on the Communication navigation menu on the left side of your screen.
   
3. Communication Window:
   The Communication window will open, displaying all the available notification options.
   
4. Select Reminders
   Check the box on the reminders you wish to have sent to users. Once a box is selected, the default message will appear, this can be customized depending on what you would like users to receive in their email.
5. Set Frequency
   Adjust when you would like the reminders to start and how often they should be sent.

Notification Options

Select from the following notifications:

• Notify Approvers and Accounting about reports sent for review.
• Notify Authors when reports are sent to Accounting.
• Notify Authors when reports are approved by Accounting.
• Notify Authors about declined expenses.
• Notify Approvers and Accounting about reassigned expenses.
• Notify Users about imported transactions.
• Remind Users about unsubmitted expense reports.
• Remind Approvers and Accounting about overdue reports for review.
• Send monthly reminders.

Each notification includes a default template message that you can customize as needed:

• Notify Approvers and Accounting about reports sent for review.
  • An expense report has been sent to you for review.
• Notify Authors when reports are sent to Accounting.
  • N/A
• Notify Authors when reports are approved by Accounting.
  • Your report has been approved.
• Notify Authors about declined expenses.
  • An expense in your report has been declined. Please review your expense report to review any declined expenses. Make all necessary changes then please resubmit your declined expenses for approval.
• Notify Approvers and Accounting about reassigned expenses.
  • N/A
• Notify Users about imported transactions.
  • You have new credit card transactions added to your ExpensePoint system. Please log into the Expense Manager to assign these transactions to your expense report(s)

Enabling Notifications

Checking the Enable Email Notifications box will automatically enable most notifications, except:

• Notify Authors when reports are sent to Accounting:
  • Recommended to keep off unless employees express concerns about the approval process timeframe.
• Notify Approvers and Accounting about reassigned expenses.
  • This causes the report to revert to the initial approval stage.

If desired, you can enable these by individually selecting their corresponding checkboxes.

After making any changes to your communication settings, click Save to apply your updates.

Watch the video below about the Communication Settings.