MDF Approval Rules
Approval rules decide which requests are waved through and which are routed to people. They are configured on the Approval Rules tab and are administrator-only.
The Auto-Approve Threshold
Requests at or below this amount skip all approval steps. Default: 2,500 in your organization's currency. Set it to 0 to require approval for everything, and note that individual fund programs can override the organization-wide value.
Auto-approval is genuinely automatic: the request is approved on submission with no reviewer involvement and the funds are committed immediately. Set it where the cost of reviewing exceeds the value of reviewing.
Building an Approval Chain
A chain is an ordered list of steps. A request enters at step one and moves on only when the current step approves. A chain can hold up to 20 steps, though two or three is normal - more than four usually means conditions would serve better than extra steps.
| Setting | Notes |
|---|
| Step name | Up to 100 characters, and must be unique within the chain. Reviewers see it, so name it for the decision - "Regional marketing sign-off", not "Step 2". |
| Approvers | One or more people who may decide the step. Duplicates are rejected. |
| Decision policy | Whether one approver closes the step or all must agree. |
| Service level (days) | How long the step should take before it counts as overdue. Minimum 1 day. |
| Escalation user | Who the step is reassigned to on breach. Must be different from the step's approver. |
| Conditions | When the step applies. A step with no conditions applies to every request, and a chain may contain only one such step. |
Choosing approvers
Each approver is either a named user, or the program owner - whoever owns the fund program the request is against. Program owner is the more maintainable choice: one chain serves every program and routes to the right person automatically, instead of a separate chain per region. You can mix both on one step.
A step that routes to the program owner must have an escalation user. The escalation user acts as its fallback approver, and the step cannot be saved without one. This matters because it is the recommended routing option.
The fallback is used when the program has no owner, or the owner is not an active and eligible approver - in both cases the step routes to the escalation user instead, and says so. If no approver can be resolved at all, the step is skipped.
Decision policy
| Policy | Behaviour |
|---|
| First response | The first approver to decide closes the step for everyone; it leaves the others' queues. |
| Unanimous | Every approver must approve. Any single rejection ends the request. |
First response suits a pool of interchangeable reviewers where you want speed. Unanimous suits a step where each approver checks something different - marketing checks the plan, finance checks the budget. Once someone has voted on a unanimous step it leaves their queue while remaining open for the others.
Service levels and escalation
When a step passes its due date, the daily sweep reassigns it to the escalation user and notifies them. Escalation moves the work to someone who can unblock it - it does not approve or reject anything, the request keeps its full history, and a step already escalated is not escalated again.
Conditions
Conditions control when a step applies.
- Amount and percentage of budget compare numerically: less than, at most, greater than, at least, equal to, and between two values.
- Currency, program and activity type compare against a set: is one of, is not one of, includes any of, and excludes any of.
Includes any and includes all matter because one request can hold several activities of different types. "Includes any of: Trade Show" matches a request with at least one trade show; "excludes any of: Trade Show" matches a request that contains no trade show.
A worked chain
With a 2,500 auto-approve threshold:
- Channel manager review - approver: program owner, with the channel director as escalation. No conditions, so it applies to everything reaching the chain. Service level 3 days.
- Marketing director sign-off - a named user. Condition: amount greater than 10,000. Service level 5 days.
- Finance sign-off - two named users, unanimous. Condition: amount greater than 50,000, or percentage of budget greater than 25. Service level 5 days.
A 1,800 request is auto-approved. A 6,000 request goes to the channel manager only. A 60,000 request goes to all three steps in turn.
Approving in Full or in Part
A reviewer is not limited to approve or reject. Each activity within a request can be approved at a percentage of its requested amount, between 0 and 100, and the approved amount is calculated from it.
A partner asks for 10,000 across three activities; the reviewer funds two in full and the third at 50%; the commitment reflects what was approved rather than what was asked. The commitment always follows the decision, never the request.
Every activity must be decided before the request can be finalized. A request with activities still awaiting a decision cannot be closed out.
Approval cannot exceed the partner's remaining allocation. An approval that would overspend is blocked, telling you by how much. Reduce the approved amount or increase the allocation.
Rejection and Decline
These are distinct outcomes with separate notifications, so you can word them differently:
- Rejected - returned to the partner with a reason. The request becomes editable and can be revised and resubmitted.
- Declined - a final no.
Changing a Chain While Requests Are in Flight
Editing a chain does not re-route requests already under review - a request carries the chain it entered with, and new requests use the new chain.
So a chain edit is safe to make at any time, but you cannot fix a misrouted in-flight request by editing the chain. Decide it, or reject it back to the partner for resubmission.
Every Decision Is Recorded
Every submission, step decision, escalation and final outcome is recorded with who did it, when, at what amount and with what comments. The trail is on the request and in the Approval History / Audit Log report.
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