What Transactions Require Authorization?

Authorization is permitted in the A Ledger only and can apply to the transactions entered into, or selected for, any of following Financials processes:

  • Payments
  • Ledger Entry/Ledger Import
  • Matching/Allocations.

When you use any of these processes and authorization is enabled, Financials checks the authorization stages that have been set up for the appropriate process to see whether any of the transactions you are working with require authorization.

If the transactions do need authorization, they are placed in an authorization set and automatically sent to the default authorizer for the first stage of authorization required. The transactions are given a status of Authorization in Progress.

See Understanding the Authorization Process for more information.

Payment Authorization

If authorization is enabled, all of the transactions selected for payment are checked to verify if authorization is required. Payment Run checks each authorization stage that has been defined for the Payments stage type to see whether the transactions meet the filter requirements for the stage. If they do, the transactions are grouped into an authorization set and sent for authorization.

If the total of the transactions selected for payment exceeds the Payment Limit for the run, these transactions also require authorization.

Note: The Payment Limit is the total amount that can be paid by payment run without authorization. It does not apply to the individual payments produced by a payment run. So, if the Payment Limit is 100 GBP and the transactions selected for payment will produce two payments of 99 GBP each, the transactions will require authorization because the total of the payment run is over 100.

If Financials is being used as a broker ledger, authorization may also be required for any transactions selected for payment that have been funded. For example, if a transaction with a Withheld allocation marker has been selected for payment thus breaking the pay as paid rule.

For more information see Authorizing Payments.

Account Allocations

If you are using Account Allocations, or any of the other matching functions, some transactions may require authorization before they can be matched. For example, this may be required if the difference between the transactions you are matching exceeds the matching tolerance percentages/values.

If Financials is being used as a broker ledger, authorization may also be required for transactions where:

  • the Funding status is set in the Allocation Code, either because a transaction with a Withheld allocation marker is being matched, or because a broken billing link has caused the Funding status to be set.
  • the allocation code/marker is being updated.

Ledger Entry / Ledger Import

A journal being entered using Ledger Entry or Ledger Import requires authorization if the Authorization Required option has been set for the journal type. See Authorizing Journals.