ANTE User ManualFiling Approvals
Filing Approvals decides who approves employee filings, and in what order. It covers Leave, Overtime, Official Business, Certificate of Attendance, Schedule Adjustment, Rest Day Work, and Schedule Swap. Instead of one person signing off, you can build a chain of stages — for example the immediate superior recommends, then the department manager gives the final approval.
Open it from Manpower → HR Setup → Filing Approvals. Changing a chain only affects filings submitted afterwards; a filing already in progress keeps the stages it was submitted with.
What Happens Without a Chain
Until you add a chain, every filing follows the default flow: the employee's immediate superior (the person in their Reports To field) approves, in one stage. A filing whose employee has no superior recorded is never approved automatically — it is held for HR. See Filings on hold (Needs attention).
Which Chain Applies
Each chain is scoped by Department and, optionally, by Filing types. When an employee submits a filing, the most specific matching active chain wins, in this order:
- The employee's department, for this filing type
- The employee's department, for all filing types
- The company default (no department), for this filing type
- The company default, for all filing types
- No chain — the default flow above
A typed chain (say, Overtime only) can sit beside an all-types chain of the same department. Two active chains of the same specificity cannot coexist.
Adding a Chain
- Open Filing Approvals
Go to Manpower → HR Setup → Filing Approvals and click Add chain. Existing chains are listed under Approval chains with their department, the filing types they cover, and their stages in order.
- Name the chain and set its scope
Enter the Chain name, choose a Department (leave it empty for the company-wide default), and pick the Filing types it covers (leave empty for all). Keep Active on.
- Define the stages
Click Add stage for each step. Stage 1 acts first; use the arrows to reorder or Remove stage to delete one. A chain can have at most 10 stages.
- Save
Click Save chain. You are asked to fix anything missing — a chain name, a stage name, an approver on every stage, a delegate where one is required, and an Approve stage as the last stage.
The dialog guides you as you build. How approval chains work opens a short walkthrough with an example. When adding a chain, Start from a template (Single approver, Supervisor then manager, Supervisor, manager, director) fills in the stages for you. The Flow preview at the top updates as you edit, showing who acts at each stage and what happens if they are away, and flags problems such as a last stage that only recommends (with a Make it Approve shortcut). Each field has a plain-language note underneath. New chains start with Active on.
On the list, each chain has an Active switch (turn a chain off without deleting it), Edit, and Delete. Inactive chains are labelled Inactive and are ignored when filings are submitted.
Stage Fields
A stage with nobody to act — an employee with no superior, an empty role or rank, a departed approver — is never skipped or escalated. The filing is held for HR instead. Away-handling only applies when a person exists but cannot act.
| Stage type | Approver sees | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Recommend | Recommend, and Reject or Decline to recommend | Moves the filing to the next stage; nothing reaches payroll yet |
| Approve (final) | Approve and Reject | Approves the filing; only now does it reach payroll and timekeeping |
Testing an Employee
The Test an employee card checks your setup before anyone files. Choose an Employee and a Filing type, then click Preview. It shows Governed by chain: … (or that no chain matches and the default flow applies) and, for each stage, who would approve it today. A stage can read Nobody resolved, Skipped for this employee, or Would be held — a sign to fix the employee's Reports To or the stage's approver before filings get stuck.
Typical gap: an Immediate superior stage for an employee with an empty Reports To. Record the superior in HRIS and preview again.
How Approvers and Employees See It
Approvers act from the Manpower Dashboard — see How multi-stage approval works. Employees see the current stage, who it is waiting on, and the approval trail on their filing, on the web and in the mobile app.
For Overtime filings, approvers also see the employee's Actual Punches (first in to last out, with "+1 day" for overnight shifts, or No punches recorded) next to the requested window, in the approval dialog, on the filing detail, and in the submitted, approved and rejected emails. This lets the approver judge the request against what really happened.
Filing Rules
Approval chains decide who approves; Filing rules decide who may file a request type in the first place and how often. Without a rule, every employee can file any request type as often as needed. The Filing rules panel on this page lists your rules.
- Click Add rule
The Add filing rule dialog opens.
- Choose the request type and name the rule
Pick the Request type and enter a Rule name.
- Limit how often (optional)
Turn on Limit how often an employee may file, set the Maximum requests (a whole number of 1 or more) and the period: Cutoff period, Calendar month or Calendar year. The list then reads, for example, "At most 2 per month".
- Restrict who may file (optional)
Fill any of Departments (sections), Payroll groups, Branches and Employee tags. Leave a list empty for no restriction; when several lists are filled, an employee must match each of them. The rule then shows Restricted to selected groups instead of Open to everyone.
- Add a message and save
Optionally write the Message shown when blocked (blank uses the standard wording), keep Active on, and save. You can edit or remove a rule at any time; removing it means employees are no longer held to it.
Schedule Swap Filings
A Schedule Swap lets an employee give up a scheduled workday and work a rest day instead, at no premium: the day worked is paid as the plain hours of the day given up. It is a filing type like the others, so it follows an approval chain and can be given a filing rule (for example a limit of swaps per month).
Employees file it from Manpower → Filing → Schedule Swap (File Swap), from the request panel on their dashboard, or on the mobile app. The form asks for the Day you will not work (a scheduled workday), the Day you will work instead (a day they would normally rest) and a Reason. Approvers can also file on behalf of an employee and auto-approve. Once approved, timekeeping treats the two days accordingly.
Approving a swap needs the Schedule Swap approval permission. Add Schedule Swap to a chain's Filing types like any other type.
How It Connects
Set up first
- Employee Records — each employee's Reports To person is the default approver when no chain applies.
- Departments — an employee's department (from their role) decides which chain applies to a filing.
- Payroll Group — filing rules can limit a request type to chosen payroll groups.
- Employee Tags — filing rules can also limit a request type to employees carrying chosen tags.
Feeds into
- Filings — every filing type, from leave and overtime to schedule swap, is routed through the chain that applies.
- Manpower Dashboard — filings whose employee has no superior are held for HR and flagged there.
- Payroll Time Keeping — approved filings change the timesheet that payroll is computed from.