We all know that expense claims can be a hassle – for those claiming the expense, for those approving the expense and even for finance staff processing the claim.

By using a combinations of tools that you may already own a manual process can be quite easily be replaced by a more automated routine. Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 can be used in conjunction with Microsoft Office Infopath 2007 (or Word / Excel if you prefer) to achieve this.

Process

The following steps are needed;

Step 1 - Create a SharePoint site to manage an approval process

Choose whether your site will be a ‘top-level site’ (i.e. totally independent of any existing intranet for example) or a ‘sub-site’ (i.e. a ‘child’ site within another site). In the case of expenses a ‘sub-site’ from your companies main intranet may well be preferable. Of course a ‘sub-site’ can easily inherit characteristics from the main site such as navigation, permissions, lists and styles.

Use the Site Actions option followed by Create Site.

You will be presented with various options beginning with the basic setup information shown below such as Title and Description and URL name.

This page will also allow you to define other key elements such as navigation, permissions, lists and styles and these can be defaulted to the settings from the parent site for speedy setup.

Step 2 - Use Workflow designer within SharePoint to create a workflow

Access ‘View all Site Content’ to take a look at your existing ‘document libraries’ and, if you wish, use the ‘create’ option to setup a new one.

Open the document library that you wish to use for expense claims and then select ‘Settings’ and ‘Document Library Settings’ as shown below.

From ‘Permisisons and Management’ choose ‘Workflow Settings.’

At this stage you need to define various aspects of your workflow. For example the template is ‘Approval’ and the name could be simply ‘Expenses.’ The ‘Task List’ option allows you define whether users are prompted to complete tasks. In our example of an expense claim this will be useful and it may make sense to select ‘New Task List’ to keep potentially confidential data separate from general tasks.

Next you will be presented with a customize options page as shown below.

Various options exist here to define the approval route for your expense claims, along with other settings such as ‘due date’ for e:mail reminders to ease approval delays.

Step 3 – Use Office InfoPath 2007 to create the required Expenses Form

InfoPath comes with sample forms including an expense claim form. Depending on your requirements these can be utilised out of the box or adjusted by the use of the ‘Layout Tables’ and ‘Layout Task Pane’ functionality.

Of course you do not have to use InfoPath to create your expenses form. You may prefer to use Word or Excel, there are pros and cons to each but the principle remains the same.

Step 4 – Upload your expense claim to the Expenses document library

Use the SharePoint document library functionality to drop a completed expenses claim form into your ‘expenses’ document library. The claim will then be available for approval.

Step 5 – Approval

When the appropriate approver (Tim Litton in our case) next logs in to the site he will be presented with an approve prompt in his tasks list as shown below. By the way when setting up the initial workflow an e:mail prompt can also be used.

Tim is being asked to approve the ‘NB1’ spreadsheet which represents the expenses claim. By right clicking the document and selectiong ‘view item’ Tim is presented with the approval window as shown below.

As you can see Tim can approve, reject, cancel or even reassign the document from this window.

Once approved Tim’s task list is updated.

The sender of the expenses claim also sees the same status change so that they know that the payment is on the way.

Summary

So there we have it, a relatively straightforward workflow process to automate manual steps, all achieved using standard Microsoft products that you may well already own licenses for. There is also the potential to create an import file from the approved expense claim that could update directly into your accounting system as an invoice.