Configure Approval Chains And Delegations

Leave requests, expense claims, shift swaps, overtime, advances, loans — every one of these needs someone to say yes. Rather than scattering that logic across the product, Veona HR runs them all through one approval engine. You teach it the rules once as approval chains (who approves which request type, and in what order), and you keep approvals flowing when people are away by setting up delegations (temporarily routing one person’s approvals to another). This is the backbone that the leave, expense, shift-swap and overtime guides all plug into.

The vocabulary:

• Approval chain — a named rule set for one request type (Leave Request, Expense Claim, Shift Swap Request, Overtime Request, Advance, Loan), made of one or more stages.
• Stage — a step in the chain with a designated approver: a Role (anyone holding that role), a named Staff member, or the requester’s Line Manager (resolved automatically from who they report to).
• Mode — Ordered means stages are evaluated one after another (stage 2 only after stage 1 approves); Parallel means every stage must approve, all at once.
• Threshold — an optional money limit on a stage, so (for example) only expenses at or above an amount draw in a senior approver.
• Delegation — a temporary, dated transfer of your approval authority to a colleague (the delegate), optionally limited to one request type. While it is active, your pending and new approvals route to them.

Meet Ngozi, an HR Manager wiring up approvals for the first time, and later a department head, Femi, who is about to take two weeks of leave. We will set the rules, then keep them running while Femi is out.

Who / when: the HR Manager or Administrator configures chains (it needs the structure-manage permission). Any staff member who is an approver can create a delegation of their own authority (it needs the delegation-manage permission).

Configure it, start to finish

1. HR Manager — open Human Resources → Approvals → Approval Chains. If nothing is configured yet you will see “No approval chains yet.” Press “New Chain”.
2. HR Manager — in the “Chain” section, give it a “Chain Name” (for example “Standard Leave Approval”), pick the “Request Type” (for example “Leave Request”), choose a “Mode” of “Ordered” or “Parallel”, and leave “Status” as “Active”.
3. HR Manager — in the “Stages” section, define the first stage’s “Approver Kind”: “Line Manager” (routes to the requester’s reports-to manager), “Role” (then pick the role from the searchable list), or “Staff” (then pick a named approver). Add a money “Amount Threshold” only if the stage should apply at or above a value.
4. HR Manager — press “Add Stage” for each further approval step, setting each one’s approver. In an Ordered chain they fire top to bottom; in a Parallel chain all of them must approve. Press “Create Chain”.
5. HR Manager — repeat for each request type your facility wants governed (a leave chain, an expense chain, an overtime chain). Chains are grouped on the page by request type so you can see your coverage at a glance.

Note

A chain’s request type is fixed once created — it is the one thing you cannot change on edit, because it is what binds the chain to the right kind of request. Everything else (name, mode, stages, thresholds, active/inactive) stays editable. If you picked the wrong type, retire that chain and create a new one.

Tip

A Line Manager stage is the most reusable: it resolves to whoever the requester reports to at the moment they submit, so one chain serves the whole organisation without naming individuals. Use Role or Staff stages where a specific person or post must always sign off (for example HR for a long-leave second stage).

Other ways this goes

Creating an ordered approval chain (stage by stage)

1. HR Manager — press “New Chain”, name it, pick the request type, set “Mode” to “Ordered”.
2. Add stages in the order you want them evaluated — for example Stage 1 “Line Manager”, Stage 2 a “Role” of HR. In Ordered mode the request advances to Stage 2 only after Stage 1 approves.
3. Press “Create Chain”. The card shows the mode and the number of stages.

Creating a parallel approval chain (all stages must approve)

1. HR Manager — press “New Chain”, name it, pick the request type, set “Mode” to “Parallel”.
2. Add every stage that must sign off. In Parallel mode they are all asked at once and the request is approved only when every stage approves.
3. Press “Create Chain”.

Setting a money-threshold stage (for example expenses over a limit)

1. HR Manager — create or edit an Expense Claim chain.
2. On the senior stage, fill “Amount Threshold” (for example 50000). That stage now applies only to claims at or above that amount; smaller claims skip it.
3. Press “Create Chain” (or “Save Changes”). The threshold is stored in minor units under the hood; you simply type the ordinary amount.

Editing or retiring a chain

1. HR Manager — on Human Resources → Approvals → Approval Chains, press “Edit” on a chain card to change its name, mode, stages or thresholds, then “Save Changes”.
2. To remove a chain, press “Delete” on the card and confirm.

Caution

A chain that is mid-flight cannot simply vanish. If approvals are in progress against it, deletion is blocked; a chain that has been used is retired (soft-deactivated) rather than hard-deleted, so the audit history of past approvals stays intact. The confirm dialog says exactly this before you proceed.

Delegating my approval authority for a date range and scope

When an approver will be away, they route their approvals to a colleague so nothing stalls.

1. Approver (any staff) — open Human Resources → Approvals → Delegations and press “New Delegation”.
2. In “Delegate To”, search and pick the colleague who will decide on your behalf. Set the “Scope” to “All Approvals” or a single request type, then choose the “From” and “To” dates of your absence.
3. Press “Create Delegation”. While the window is active, the engine auto-routes your pending and new approvals to the delegate, who sees and decides them in their own My Approvals. The row shows a live status — Scheduled before it starts, Active during, Expired after.

Note

A delegation moves the authority to decide, not the accountability for the rule. The chain still governs which requests need approval; the delegation only changes who clicks approve while you are out. Every decision is still audited against the person who actually made it.

Revoking a delegation

1. Approver (any staff) — open Human Resources → Approvals → Delegations, find the active delegation, and press “Revoke”. Confirm the prompt.
2. The delegation immediately stops routing approvals; its status flips to Revoked and your approvals come back to you. (You can revoke early even if the end date has not arrived.)

Blocked: who may configure chains versus delegations

These two surfaces have different permission gates, on purpose.

Caution

Configuring approval chains requires the structure-manage permission — an HR-admin action, because a chain governs everyone. Creating or revoking a delegation requires the delegation-manage permission — held by approvers so they can hand over their own authority. Holding one does not grant the other; an Administrator assigns whichever your role needs.

What happens next

Once your chains exist, every matching request — a nurse’s leave, a clerk’s expense claim, a swap between two doctors — is routed to the right approvers in the right order the moment it is submitted, with no extra setup on the requesting screens. Approvers act in My Approvals, delegations keep the queue moving when people are away, and every verdict is recorded. The engine you configured here is what makes all the self-service request flows actually resolve.

Follow the trail

• Previous: Set Up The Organisation Structure
• Next: Build And Publish The Roster And Shifts · Approve Shift Swaps And Manage Leave Calendars
• Related: Build And Publish The Roster And Shifts · Approve Shift Swaps And Manage Leave Calendars · Build, Approve And Pay A Pay Run · Decide HR Requests In My Approvals