Planning units are in one of the following states:

• Not Started—Initial state of all planning units. An administrator begins the review process by starting a planning unit using the Start action, which changes a planning unit's state. In FreeForm, the Start action changes the planning unit state to First Pass. In Bottom Up, the Start action changes the planning unit state to “Under Review” and it goes to first in promotion path. In Distribute, the Start action changes the planning unit state to “Under Review” and it goes to last in promotion path.

  Note:

  First and Last in the promotion path are not states but locations of where and who owns the planning unit.

• First Pass—Beginning state of planning units selected for the budgeting process. Planning units have no owners during First Pass. Users having access can enter data and promote planning units during the First Pass state. During this state, Administrators may exclude some or all members from planning units.

  When a planning unit is ready for review, users select one of several actions, changing planning unit status and passing ownership. To be notified by email if you become the owner of a planning unit, see Setting Up Email.

  Note:

  When using the Free Form template for approvals, users must assign the next owner.

• Under Review—Occurs after a Promote or Submit action, and signifies that someone is reviewing the planning unit. Only the current owner or administrators can modify data on planning units whose state is Under Review. While Under Review, planning units may undergo iterations of promotions, submissions, signoffs, and rejections until they are finally approved.

• Frozen—All related data in descendant planning units is locked (read only). The owner who froze the planning units, or an owner above that user, selects Unfreeze to reverse this action.

• Distributed—Multiple users are reviewing the budget. The reviewers are filtered by permissions and specified reviewers for the distribute action selected (Distribute, Distribute Children, or Distribute Owner, see Changing Planning Unit Status).

• Signed Off—Occurs when Sign Off is selected. Only the current owner or administrator can modify data or perform an action on planning units whose state is Signed Off. Ownership does not change when a planning unit is signed off.

• Not Signed Off—Occurs when Reject is selected. Only the current owner or administrator can modify data or perform an action on a planning unit whose state is Not Signed Off.

• Approved—Occurs when Approve is selected. The last user in the promotional path (the owner of the planning unit) becomes the owner, regardless of whether they are an owner or a reviewer. Owners can edit the data if they have write access to the member combination that defines the planning unit, and can perform the Approve action. Reviewers who are the last user in the promotional path cannot edit the data in the planning unit, but can perform the Approve action. After all planning units are approved, the budgeting cycle is complete.

Notes:

• In all states except the Not Started state, users with read access can view data, view the approval state, view the history, and read and enter annotations.

• A planning unit may skip approval states.

• The review process can be managed at a higher level with parent planning units.

• Planning unit owners and reviewers can be individual users, or they can be a group. For information about assigning a group as the owner or the reviewer, see "About Group-based Approvals" in Oracle Hyperion Planning Administrator's Guide.