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Hello IFS Community,

We are currently upgrading from APPS 8 to IFS Cloud (23R2) and are exploring the Voucher Approval Workflow functionality to manage the approval of M & Q Vouchers in the system.

During our testing, we ‘ve identified a potential control weakness. Specifically, it appears that one user (e.g., Accountant) can enter a voucher, and another user (e.g., Accounting Manager) can add/delete voucher rows or edit the code parts, amounts, date, and text before approving it. This is problematic as the Accounting Manager can essentially bypass the ‘Separate User Approval’ setting which is designed to block the creator of the voucher from also approving it, by simply editing most of the voucher elements before approving it.

From our understanding, this feature has been around since APPS 10. We are reaching out to the community to see if anyone has a suggestion to prevent this from happening or if anyone has compensating controls used to mitigate this risk.

Thanks,
Mark

Hi @Mark Fung 

 

Please follow the below mentioned steps and please let us know whether you are able to achieve the expected functionality.

  1. select the voucher type and go to the user groups per voucher series.
  1. In the User Group per voucher series, you can connect the user group with different authority levels.
  2. You need to grant the approve only authority level for that for the user group of “account manager”.

 

 

Best Regards,

Tharindu


Hi @Tharindu Nadeeshan,

Thank you for your response. My colleague and I attempted to set this up in our test environment today, but we were unable to achieve the expected functionality. Specifically, we performed the following steps:

  1. Created a new User Group called AM - Accounting Manager.
  2. Removed user YHO from the AC User Group and added them to the AM User Group.
  3. Added the AM User Group to the 2024 User Group per Voucher Series for Voucher Type M, with Authorization Level set to Approve Only.
  4. Added the AM User Group to the 2024 – 8 User Groups Per Period.

We then created a voucher and asked user YHO to try editing it before approving it. Unfortunately, they were still able to edit the voucher before approval. What’s more baffling is that once they clicked “Set Approved”, the General tab showed that the voucher was approved by User Group AC, even though YHO is no longer in the AC User Group.

Furthermore, the proposed solution does not fully align with our business needs, as there may be scenarios where an Accounting Manager needs to enter a manual voucher and have someone else approve it. We are hoping to retain their ability to enter vouchers. Are there any other solutions that allow the Accounting Manager to enter vouchers while also preventing them from editing vouchers entered by someone else?

I understand that this is a multifaceted problem and appreciate any help that I can get.

Thanks,

Mark


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