What an approval flow is and how it works
A named rule that decides who reviews an employee submission, the four approver groups it can use, how it attaches differently to benefit purchases and uploaded expense reports, and the default when nothing is mapped.
An approval flow is a named rule that decides what happens when an employee submits something in CLVR Benefits, either a benefit purchase from the store or an uploaded expense report (for example a wellness, friskvård, receipt). The flow either approves the submission automatically or routes it to one or more groups of reviewers, in the order you choose. You build flows under your HR settings, and each flow stays inactive until you attach it to a benefit or an expense category. This article explains the parts of a flow, the four approver groups, how purchases and uploads each find their flow, and what happens when nothing is mapped.
The parts of a flow
Every flow has three parts, set on the Approval Flows form:
- Flow name: a label you choose so you can recognise it later, for example "Manager then finance".
- Behavior: either Approval process (route the submission to reviewers) or Auto approve (clear it the moment it is submitted, with no review).
- Groups (in order): for an approval process, the reviewer groups the submission passes through. The order you pick them in is the order they review in. The groups are Manager, HR, Salary, and Finance.
With Approval process, CLVR works through the groups in turn: a later group is only asked once the one before it has finished. If a group in the order has nobody able to review a given submission, CLVR moves on rather than getting stuck.
Auto approve means a submission is approved instantly with no human review. Use it only where you are comfortable skipping a check, and keep an eye on which benefits or categories it is attached to.
The four approver groups
Each group you add to a flow becomes one step that resolves to a set of real people when a submission arrives. There are four to choose from:
- Manager: the submitting employee's own manager, found automatically per employee (no fixed list to maintain).
- HR: the employees you assign to the HR group under Group Members.
- Salary: the employees you assign to the Salary group.
- Finance: the employees you assign to the Finance group.
HR, Salary, and Finance all work the same way: each resolves to the people you have added as members under Group Members on the approval settings page. Manager is the one that behaves differently.
How Manager resolves
The Manager group does not use a fixed list. When an employee submits, CLVR looks up that employee's manager in this order:
The employee's Manager value (from their employee data) is matched to a colleague by employee number.
If that finds no one, CLVR uses the employee's linked manager field instead.
If neither finds a manager, the step falls back to whoever is in the HR group.
Because Manager is worked out per employee, there is no Manager picker under Group Members. You only keep each employee's manager data accurate. For the full lookup, see how the Manager approver is determined.
A missing or wrong Manager value sends that step to your HR group instead of a manager. Keeping employee manager data up to date is what keeps Manager steps routing to the right person.
When a group has nobody to review
A step only assigns reviewers if its group resolves to at least one person. If a group is empty (for example, you added the Salary group but assigned no Salary members), the flow skips that step and moves to the next one. If no step in the whole flow resolves anyone, the submission is approved automatically so it never gets stuck waiting on an empty group.
Where you set flows up
Flows live under your HR settings, on the Approval Settings page (the Approval Flows section). Only members of your HR team can open this page; if you do not see it, you do not have HR access in CLVR.
The same page has a Group Members section where you choose which employees belong to the HR, Salary, and Finance groups. The Manager group is different: CLVR uses each employee's own manager, so there is no list to fill in for it. In the flows table, the order is shown with arrows, for example Manager then HR then Finance, so you can read the path at a glance.
How a flow becomes active
Creating a flow does not change anything on its own. A flow only takes effect once you attach it to where employees submit. The same flow you build can be reused across several benefits and several upload categories at once. For example, one "Manager then HR" flow can review both a hardware purchase and an uploaded travel receipt. Editing that flow changes the review path everywhere it is mapped, so a single change can affect both purchases and uploads. The two kinds of submission find their flow in different ways.
How a benefit purchase finds its flow
A benefit purchase only ever looks at the flow mapped to that benefit. In Benefit Settings, turn on Custom approval for the benefit, then pick a flow from the dropdown; that flow now runs every time an employee purchases that benefit.
If Custom approval is left off, the purchase falls back to the benefit's own default, with no upload rules involved. Depending on the benefit, that default is one of:
- Default: auto-approved by HR.
- Default: manual review required in HR inbox.
There is no category-level or company-wide fallback for purchases. A purchase either uses the flow mapped to its benefit, or that benefit's built-in default.
How an uploaded expense report finds its flow
An uploaded expense report checks for a flow in a set order and uses the first one it finds:
The category's own flow. In Category Settings, the Upload Expense Report section has an Enable custom approval flow toggle. If it is on and a flow is chosen, that category-specific flow runs for uploads in that category.
The default upload flow. If the category has no flow of its own, CLVR uses the default upload flow, a flow mapped for uploads with no specific category attached. It acts as a catch-all so you do not have to configure every category by hand.
Standard approvers. If no category flow and no default upload flow apply, the report goes to your standard approvers (and the employee's manager, where one is set). The toggle's default text reads Default: approved by standard approvers.
Only uploaded expense reports have the category-then-default lookup and the standard-approvers fallback. Benefit purchases never use either, they stay tied to the benefit.
What happens when nothing is mapped
If an employee submits something that has no flow attached, CLVR falls back to your standard reviewers: the employees you have marked as standard approvers, plus the submitting employee's own manager. This is the default behaviour, so submissions are never left without a reviewer even before you build any flows.
What auto-approve means for each type
If the flow you map is set to auto-approve (or has no review steps), the submission is marked Approved the moment it arrives, with a completion date, and no reviewer is notified.
- For an uploaded expense report, auto-approving also completes the review automatically, so the reimbursement continues straight through the normal expense path.
- For a benefit purchase, an auto-approve flow approves it on submission the same way.
For uploads, there is one more way a report can clear without a human: if the flow assigns reviewers but none of its steps resolves to an actual person, the report is auto-approved so it cannot get stuck. See how an approval flow picks approvers for the full lookup.
Troubleshooting
- I created a flow but nothing changed. A flow does nothing until it is attached. Map it to a benefit (in benefit settings) or to an expense category (in category settings).
- A group never gets asked to review. Open Group Members and check that the group has people assigned. An empty group is skipped, so the submission passes straight to the next group or finishes.
- A submission was approved with no review. A flow can auto-complete when none of its groups resolve to a person. Check that the groups in the flow have members under Group Members, and that submitters have a manager set if the flow uses Manager.
- A purchase did not use my upload flow. Purchases ignore category and default upload flows. Map the flow on the benefit itself under Custom approval in Benefit Settings.
- An upload skipped my category flow. Check that Enable custom approval flow is on for that category in Category Settings and a flow is selected. If it is off, the default upload flow (or standard approvers) takes over.
- There is no Manager picker. That is expected. Manager is resolved automatically from each employee's manager data, not from a list.
- I cannot open the Approval Settings page. Only the HR team can manage flows. Ask your HR contact to make the change, or to confirm your access.