What is the Contract Approval feature?
When activated, the Contract Approval feature inserts a contract approval workflow step before a contract is offered to a contractor. Hirers can create contracts and receive the necessary country-specific classifications before submitting their contract for approval. An approver is then required to either approve or reject the contract. If approved, the hirer can offer the contract to the contractor. If rejected, the hirer can either edit & re-submit or discard the contract.
How does the approval workflow work?
When the feature is enabled, any new contracts that are created will be sent through the approval process, rather than the regular, direct-to-offer process.
The approval process looks like this:
Contract created
A contract is created as normal by a Hirer, but instead of it being immediately available for offer to the contractor, it can only be ‘Submitted for approval’.
Contract submitted
Submitting the contract for approval triggers an approval request email, which is sent to all of the approval contacts - a chosen set of email addresses that are authorised to approve or reject a contract before it can be offered. (The contract is now considered pending until either an approval or rejection action has been taken, or it has been edited - which revokes the outstanding approval request, which needs to be sent again.)
Contract reviewed by approver
Approvers who receive the email approval request can then review the contract through YunoJuno, and choose to either approve or reject the contract.
Rejection - If the contract is rejected, the hirer is notified by email, and the contract can then be edited for resubmission or discarded. For details on why the contract was rejected hirers need to contact the reviewer.
Approval - If the contract is approved, the hirer is notified by email, and the contract becomes immediately able to offer.
Contract offered
After a contract has been approved, the contract can be offered to a contractor as normal.
How can I enable the feature?
There are two options:
Enable the feature for all contracts
Enable the feature for specific hirers only
Please contact either your Account Manager or Platform Success team to enable the Contract Approval feature.
How do I manage the approvers?
You can decide to have approval requests sent to one or many email addresses including shared inboxes.
Please note, approval requests are sent to all email addresses.
Please contact either your Account Manager or Platform Success to manage your approvers.
Do approvers need to be registered users?
No, approvers do not need to be registered as YunoJuno users to approve or reject contracts.
The email address of the individual approver will still be captured for auditing purposes, even if a shared email inbox is being used.
Can a contract be routed to different approver(s)?
Yes, Contract Approvals can be configured, so that the hirer can chose to route the contract to the correct approver/group of approvers for their request. For example, if certain contracts needed to go to one set of approvers in Finance, while other contracts needed to be approved by Procurement, this can be done in the platform. If you would like to take advantage of this Contract Approval routing functionality, please contact your Account Manager.
Can a hirer edit a contract that has already been sent for approval?
Yes, hirers can edit and re-submit contracts. When an approver reviews a re-submitted contract the approver will be informed that the contract has since been edited, and may be resubmitted.
What happens if an approver tries to review a contract that has already been approved or rejected?
The approver will be informed that the contract has already been approved or rejected.
What happens if an approver is away on leave?
The 'Approvals Delegation' feature means that approvers can delegate their power of approval to other platform users within the same account. When an approver sets up an approval delegation, the approval delegate will be able to approve any outstanding approval requests that already exist, as well as any new requests that are created during the delegation period.
The main approver can either schedule the approval delegation to become active at a future date and time, or set it to become active immediately. The main approver can also set an end date for when the approval delegation should end. Both the delegator and the delegate will receive emails from the platform, confirming that an approval delegation has become active, and another email confirming when the approval delegation has ended.
What happens if the hirer is the only approver?
The hirer is required to self-approve their contract or forward the approval request email to their manager or colleague.
What happens if a hirer attempts to self-approve their contract?
Due to the design which allows unregistered users to approve contracts, it is possible to self-approve contracts. Contract approvals are recorded for auditing purposes and is possible to identify approvers who have self-approver their own contracts.
If you are concerned about an individual approver self-approving their contracts, then they should not be an approval contact.
What happens when a contract is renewed?
Renewed contracts will go through the approval process.
How do approvals work with country-specific classification processes?
Country-specific contract classification processes will take place before the contract is submitted for approval.
Can this feature be tested?
Yes, you can enable this feature for individual hirers before activating it for all hirers.
How does this work if we need specific approvers to approve specific contracts?
As approval requests are emailed to all approvers, you have a few options:
Approvers identify their contracts by business unit (this is the default label, however, you may have renamed it). The business unit is visible in the approval email notification subject line and body.
Approvers can set up email rules to identify the contracts that they need to approve. For example, flag emails where the subject line contains their business unit, otherwise, mark them as read.
You can set up a shared inbox with rules to forward the approval email notifications to the relevant approver(s).