Submit Your Suggestions for Vista

My assumption would be that if an Invoice Reviewer Group exists for a job, that group would prevail. The Vendor Reviewer would be the fallback option. However, Vendor Reviewers (in our case) are used primarily for expenses not associated with projects. Having a Reviewer Group instead of a targeted reviewer would simplify our invoice routing needs as well, such as requiring secondary approvals for invoices exceeding a cap, etc. I completely agree that this is a necessary update.

We use the reviewer on the vendor master for equipment vendor invoices to always route to our equipment manager, but that is posing issues because now we would like the equipment invoices to route to a group and not just one person. A work around we had to do was to make the equipment coordinator an authorized user for the manager, but this isn't ideal. We would love the ability to add a reviewer group to the vendor master for this specific need.

I agree, this would be a great improvement.

This would be an awesome addition!! It is needed ASAP.

I second the idea of adding Reviewer Groups for Overhead type vendors at the AP Vendor Master level. As Laura mentions below, you may not use this functionality for vendors that are primarily job, equipment, etc. related. However, for vendors that are always coded to GL accounts, this would be very helpful to default at the Vendor Master level.

To make matters more complicated on your questions below Gary, and to be fair, this may not apply to very many folks other than us, we'd love to have a Reviewer Group option at the Phase level for Jobs rather than at the Job level. Our situation is many Reviewer groups apply to a single job, so we can't use a single Reviewer Group at the Job level. Our Phases are divisional and multiple divisions work on the same contract/job...we didn't want to go down the route of setting up multiple jobs for a single contract, so we make the distinction at the phase level for our divisions.

Vendor Master should have a Reviewer Group field that auto populates the APUI tables when new invoices are entered. Not even sure why Vendor Master has Reviewer... what the heck does that do? Nothing! Maybe it was a mistake way back when... it's been there forever. We built a trigger, but that is not as good because it requires an extra keystroke to populate the APUI field. I see the questions below about what to do when Line Type is Job, but my experience these do not overlap. The vendors that would have a default are not likely to be Job related. They are usually overhead, facilities, etc.

Gary, essentially wherever a reviewer can be currently set (for both invoices and requisitions), a reviewer group should be allowed instead (or in addition to). Having reviewer groups only used in certain aspects and only for unapproved invoices is inconsistent and prevents a uniform application of reviewer groups across modules and between invoices and requisitions.

And to address the topic itself, vendor-based reviewers are of little use in my organization as the same vendor can be used by, say, different jobs or departments; thus, approvals need to be directed by module settings (e.g. JC, GL) rather than by the vendor. I don't disagree that others would want this, I just want to ensure that it's not seen as the single solution for everyone.

To clarify, if Reviewer Group was added to AP Vendor Master, it would default at the AP Unapproved Invoice header level and apply to all lines. Additional Reviewer Groups and/or individual Reviewers would default (if they existed) and apply at the line level based on invoice line type (e.g. Job line reviewers from the job, expense line reviewers from GL Account, Equipment line reviewers from EM Dept, .....) Make sense?

What do you think of simplifying reviewer setup and supporting Review Group only at the job, equipment dept., and inventory location levels (instead of both Reviewer Group and individual Reviewer(s). The appropriate Reviewer Group would default in AP Unapproved Invoice entry and individual reviewers could still be added to the invoice, but initial setup would be simpler and more consistent across line types. Thoughts?

Job Reviewer Group would take precedent.  However, I'm guessing that this is more of a way to route overhead related invoices to a group for approval and the vendors don't have much overlap with jobs.

Not sure I understand the question 'what would be the expected behavior if Review Group also existed on the job'.  If we could add a reviewer group to a job rather than just a reviewer that would be useful as well, but we think it's more valuable to have a reviewer group option on the AP Vendor Master rather than on the Job Master.

What would be the expected behavior if Reviewer Group also existed on the job?