A transaction's life cycle normally consists of the following phases. These phases are references within this guide to such an extent just the phase name is given without reference to ‘transaction phase’ or ‘phase’.
Draft – The transaction has been entered into the system, but it is not yet affecting system operations. All transaction versions start in this phase and stay in this phase if only the validate action is taken. Also, the transaction will stay in this phase with the submit action if there are rejection errors or overrideable errors that cannot be overridden by the current user. In this latter case a user with sufficient security must apply the override.
Pending – Pending is an optional but common transaction phase for most transactions manually entered. The phase indicates the transaction has been tentatively accepted subject to approval rules. In this state there can be a limited number of updates that occur for tracking and possibly control in the areas of budget control, cash balance, and fund balance. The transaction will stay in this phase until the final approval is applied. At which time the system will perform a new set of validations. If there are no new reject errors or no new overrideable errors above any override level already applied to the transaction, then the transaction will move on to the Final phase. If there is a new reject error or one with a higher override level, the phase will revert to Draft and any pending updates will be reversed. Draft is also the phase that will occur if an approver decides to reject the transaction at any approval level.
Final – The transaction has been fully accepted into the system. All approvals, when applicable, have been applied, the limited number of pending updates have been reversed and replaced with full complement of permanent updates.
Historical (Final) – When a new version of a transaction is created with the modify or cancel actions and then submitted to Final, the previous version of the transaction goes from Final to Historical (Final) to indicate it is no longer the current version of the transaction instance.
Conflict Draft – When a new version of a transaction is created while there is already an existing version of the transaction already in the Draft phase, the existing version is changed from Draft to Conflict Draft to allow the new version. The old version remains available should a user need to reapply the updates in the most current version. As a user cannot create a second draft online, this scenario occurs when transaction modifications or cancellations occur through system processing, uploads, or interfaces.
Template – This unique transaction status enables the creation of a transaction instance that can never be submitted, but serves as a data entry tool for users to copy and complete. The recommended method for creating a template is to copy an existing transaction that has passed all system editing into a new transaction instance with the template transaction phase, which is done with the Create Template indication found on the Create Transaction page.