Reporting hierarchies define the manager-employee relationships that determine how expense reports, trip requests, and cash advances are routed for approval. Each employee has a primary manager, and optionally a secondary manager, forming the chain of command for approvals.

Access reporting hierarchies

Go to Admin Settings > Approval Management.
Click the Relationships tab.

The Relationships tab showing manager-employee reporting chains

How reporting hierarchies work

When an employee submits a report, trip, or advance, Eloope routes it to the employee's assigned manager. If multi-level approvals are configured, the request moves up the chain to the next manager in the hierarchy after the first approval.

Each reporting relationship includes:

Field	Description
Employee	The user who submits items for approval.
Primary manager	The direct manager who receives approval requests first.
Secondary manager	An optional backup manager for escalation or delegation.
Temporary	Whether this is a temporary assignment (e.g., during out-of-office).
Delegation reason	The reason for a temporary assignment.
Escalation settings	Configuration for automatic escalation behavior.
Approval conditions	Any conditions that affect this reporting relationship.

Set up a reporting relationship

Go to Admin Settings > Approval Management > Relationships.
Click Add Relationship.
Select the Employee.
Select their Primary Manager from the dropdown.
Optionally select a Secondary Manager.
Click Save.

Note: Each employee can have only one active primary manager. Assigning a new primary manager replaces the existing one.

Circular hierarchy prevention

Eloope prevents circular reporting structures. For example, if Alice reports to Bob, you cannot set Bob to report to Alice. The system validates all relationship changes to ensure the hierarchy remains a valid tree structure.

Temporary relationships

Use temporary reporting relationships when a manager is out of office or when an employee temporarily reports to a different team.

Edit the reporting relationship.
Toggle Temporary on.
Enter a Delegation Reason.
Click Save.

The original relationship is restored when the temporary assignment is removed.

Plan limits

The number of reporting hierarchy levels is limited by your plan:

Plan	Max hierarchy levels
Lite	1
Starter	2
Business	Unlimited
Enterprise	Unlimited

Note: Only users with the Administrator role can modify reporting hierarchies.

Reporting hierarchies