Approvals Troubleshooting
Purpose: This resource will help you troubleshoot Time Off Approval questions in BambooHR.
Example: An approval is showing up for a user who is not in the workflow. Why is this happening?
Explanation of the issue: This will most often happen with Time Off requests, but may happen with other types of requests as well.
How can I fix it?: Take a moment to review the solutions found in our Time Off FAQ.
Example: All Full Admins or users in an access level are receiving a request, but only one needs to approve.
Explanation of the issue: If you have “Full Admin” or a specific access level selected as the approver in your Approvals settings, everyone involved will receive the notification. Only one of the users needs to approve the request. Once approved, the request will show as completed and will be removed from the Inbox for those other users. You might also consider choosing the “Specific Person” option if one specific admin or access level user will always be that approver for the workflow.
You cannot select Full Admin users as the approver but exclude the Account Owner from receiving the request. The Account Owner is considered a Full Admin, and will receive the notifications.
What to do next: Take a moment to review and/or update your Approvals settings for the workflow(s) affected.
Example: If your company requires a multi-level approval process, you can create up to five different approval levels. You can do this by clicking + Add and selecting the desired approval option for each level. Remember to save your changes.
When you set up a multi-level approval workflow, only the first approver receives a notification when the specific request is submitted. If the first recipient approves the request, the next level approver will receive an email notification, and they will follow through accordingly. The requestor will not receive a notification about their request until the final approver has approved the update. The multi-level approval process will end if any approver denies the request before completing the process, and the requestor will receive an email notification about their denied request.
If you list the same person two or more times in an approval workflow, BambooHR will skip over their first approval and have them approve within their second approval instead.
For example, Olivia Sterling is the Account Owner and is assigned to two levels of Approval. Olivia is Approver 1, set to Account Owner, and Approver 3 as Specific Person - Olivia Sterling (Account Owner). Olivia will be skipped over as Approver 1 since both approver levels of 1 and 3 have the same person. Instead, the request will go directly to Approver 2. Once Approver 2 approves the employee’s request, it will advance to Approver 3 (Olivia).
Example: Our Account Owner received an email notification about a Broken Approval Workflow. What does this mean?
Explanation of the issue: If a user removes an approver from their BambooHR account (terminated or marked as inactive), the Account Owner will receive an email notification about a broken approval workflow.
How can I fix it?: Within the notification, the Account Owner can click Update Approval to go to Settings and update the approval workflow. In the meantime, all requests for this approval will skip the removed approver.