PTE Expense Report Approval for <NONE> Projects

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Posted on by Irfan.Rasheed

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Hi,

We are facing a strange issue in a company after upgrade to GP 2018 October Release, while approving employee expenses from PTE Expenses- Pending Approval Window.

The issue is we are using <NONE> Project and category as NON PROJ EXP to capture all kind G&A expenses while the resources allocated on projects do claim their expenses using their assigned project ID's.

However, once an approver try to approve G&A expenses, he gets message that You are not allowed to exceed Budget Costs. (strange) as this category isn't track under any project. Clicking on OK Button, Workflow action window appears and ultimately expense got approved. This issue comes only for G&A expenses, rest project related expenses got approved without any issue.

Interestingly, the expense report creator gets message for expense approval with few additional lines, One or more lines is over budget on this employee expense. If you approve through this email you will not be prompted for the password but the employee expense will be approved.

Is there any setup issue? as i check settings from other companies, there is no such issue except additional lines over final approval email.

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Microsoft Dynamics GP

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Beat Bucher GP Gee... 28,058 Moderator on at

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Hi Irfan,

It's been many years that I haven't actively used the Project Accounting module in GP for PTE, but the error message makes completely sense as when you want to post a PA transactions against a project, GP always checks to see if there is enough money allocated to the project. When working with budgets in GP, each project's Cost Category will have some amount allocated, and if there is none left, you get this kind of error message, as negative amounts are not allowed in Projects (which means you'd have over-drafted money from your project).

I can sense that the WF logic doesn't really catch the fact that you're using a project called <NONE> which likely has no budget at all... but if follows the rules for budget validation anyway.

I'd have to test the scenario you're describing in my own environment with WF setup on Project Accounting..

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Irfan.Rasheed 717 on at

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Hi Beat,

Thanks for your detailed reply.

Infcat we are using project accounting extensively for our project and non project claims. Earlier, we used business portal and PDK.

Theme was the same, for non project activities we use <none> as project and cost category in business portal and PDK. After upgrading to GP2016, functionality to use <none> as cost category has been discontinued in GP. So we created a cost category NON PROJ EXPENSE and use <none> as project for non project activities, which fulfil our requirements with workflows without any issues.

However, once we upgraded to GP 2018 October release we are facing these problems every time we approve the expense.

One more thing, we also deployed web services for expense approvals, if a supervisor approve expense report using email workflow action, this message didn't appears, but if he try to approve that expense using navigation window in GP, then all these errors arises.

Yes, I would love to hear from you, if you can check these scenarios in your test environment and share your thoughts.

With regards.

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Isaac Olson on at

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Hello,

Usually we would see this if the line actually is over budget with Workflow as outlined in the following blog post:

Microsoft Dynamics GP 2018: Improvements in Workflow for Project Accounting PTE for budget warnings - Microsoft Dynamics GP Community

Whether or not you get that message would be driven based on setup in the following window for exceeding budgets.

For the Employee Expense setting, under Project, click Setup choose Employee Expense and select the options button.

I tested your scenario on my system on GP 18.4.1461 which is currently the latest version and I could not recreate what you are seeing when using no Project and only a Cost Category on my PTE Employee Expense line. I also tested all 3 options, unmarking exceed budget, marking it, and marking it with a password.

I would say that there could be a unique setup or data condition in your specific company causing this to occur at times when it shouldn't or potentially you are on an older version of Microsoft Dynamics GP 2018 where this issue has not been addressed yet. If it is a code issue, then you should be able to recreate following your steps and the setups from the blog above as well in Fabrikam or other companies.

If you want to dig further we could certainly do that through a support case as well.

I hope this helps!

Isaac Olson

Microsoft Support

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Irfan.Rasheed 717 on at

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Thanks Isaac for your detailed reply.

Basically, we have been upgraded from GP 2016 R2 to Dynamics GP 2018 (18.4.1361) earlier we keep uncheck Exceed Total Budget Costs, so expenses can only be approved/ posted after budget availability. Users can submit expenses under workflow, but approver cannot post, until budget is available.

Under our production environment we have tested this scenario by assigning a password for Exceed Total Budget Costs, as per below:

Now, the approver can approve the expenses without getting You are not allowed to exceed Budget Costs, for NON PROJ EXPENSE.

Similarly, if there are budget constraints in project budget then a user gets a popup to enter exceed budget password, which is not shared with anyone. as per below.

So, we feels there is change in overall workflow behavior after using different options under projects.

Best Regards.

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Isaac Olson on at

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Hi Irfan,

There would definitely be a change in the workflow when upgrading from GP 2016 R2 to Dynamics GP 2018 (18.4.1361). The feature that I posted the link on was a new feature in GP 2018, so it did not exist in GP 2016.

community.dynamics.com/.../gp-2018-adds-improvements-in-workflow-for-project-accounting-pte

Thanks!

Isaac Olson

Microsoft Support

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