Setting approval policies

You can use your policy settings to configure the Spotnana Online Booking Tool to determine when approvals will be required and which users in your company will have the right to approve or reject travel bookings for travelers. 

Policies

Policies may be set:

• to require approvals before a booking can be confirmed (also referred to as hard approvals) or
• to be optional and only cancel the booking if the approver declines the booking (also referred to as soft approvals). 

Approvers

You can set approval types and approvers for each policy. For more details, see Assign approvers

Approval Dashboard

In addition, approvers can use the Approval Dashboard to act on pending approvals for future bookings or view past bookings and their approvals. For more details, see Approval Dashboard.

Set the approval type 

Approval types are set per policy. If you have more than one policy configured, you will need to configure this setting for each policy.

1. Select Policies from the Program menu. The Settings page will be displayed with the Policy branch expanded on the left hand side. 
2. Select the desired policy (the Default policy is displayed by default). The selected policy will be displayed. 
3. Expand the General section. 
4. Set the approval types you want for each booking type (air, hotel, car). For each booking type, you can set the approval type for in-policy and out-of-policy bookings separately. To set different approval types for domestic and international air bookings, click Custom (separate setting sections will appear for each). Which bookings are considered in- or out-of-policy are determined by the rest of your settings (in the Flight, Hotel, Car, and Rail sections below the General section).
   The approval type settings are: 
   • None: No approvals will be required for this type of booking.
   • Soft approval: Approvals are not required for this type of booking. The approver will be able to approve or reject bookings (before the approval deadline). If the booking is not rejected, it will proceed. If the booking is rejected, it will be canceled. Due to rail carrier restrictions related to void periods and refundability, soft approvals are not available for rail.
   • Hard approval: Approvals are required for this type of booking. The approver will be able to approve or reject bookings (before the approval deadline). If the booking is not approved, it will be canceled. If the booking is approved, it will proceed. Due to rail carrier restrictions related to void periods and refundability, hard approvals are not available for rail.
   • Passive approval: No approvals will be required for this type of booking. However, the manager or designated approver will receive an email notification of the booking. 
5. Once all approval settings are made, click Save changes. 

If you set the Approver type field to Designated approver, be sure to set a designated approver. For details, see Assign approvers.
If you set the Approver type field to Employee's manager, be sure to set a default approver. For details, see Assign approvers.