Time & Expense Entry Requirements

Ever had the requirement within Project Service to prevent Time Entries from being submitted if certain fields are not filled out? What about requiring a receipt on Expense Entries if the amount is above a threshold? Project Service Expense Categories can be setup to require a receipt, however it is not configurable. If you only need to require a receipt for a category if the amount is above $25 then you are out of luck.

Because the Time/Expense entry screens are not regular forms we cannot use a business rule or field requirements. Common practice at this point would be to pull in a development resource to try and fill this requirement gap or not use the default entry screens entirely.

But what if there were a way to continue using the default screens and utilize a no code solution?

Try this:

1. Create a business rule on the Project Approval that runs scope = ENTITY.
2. Set your requirements based on the fields of the Project Approval. This could be If(Entry Type = Expense, Has Receipt = No, and Amount >= $25).
3. If the condition evaluates to true then have it trigger an error message with an explanation to the user.
4. Activate your business rule
5. Navigate to your expense and try to submit.

Explanation: The Time/Expense entry submission process includes creation of the Project Approval record. If we cause an exception to occur during the plugin execution our error message is displayed to the user and the changes are not committed to the database.

You now have Time and Expense requirements!