Expense report approval workflow not triggering when submitted from mobile app

ERP NetSuite
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1

Our expense report approval workflow works perfectly when users submit reports through the desktop interface, but completely fails to trigger when submitted via the NetSuite mobile app. This is causing significant approval delays as most of our field staff use mobile exclusively.

The workflow trigger is set to “On Create” and “On Edit” with a condition checking if status equals “Pending Approval”. When I check the workflow execution log, there’s simply no entry for mobile-submitted reports - it’s like the workflow never sees them.

I’ve verified the workflow is Active and the mobile app record status does change to Pending Approval when submitted. The SuiteFlow event conditions look correct:

<trigger type="ON_CREATE">
  <condition field="status" operator="IS" value="pendingApproval"/>
</trigger>

Has anyone else experienced this? We’re on 2023.2 and need to understand if this is a mobile app limitation or a workflow configuration issue. Our finance team is manually processing these approvals now which is not sustainable.

2

I’ve seen this before. The mobile app uses a different save sequence. It creates the record first with a draft status, then updates it to pending approval in a separate transaction. Your ON_CREATE trigger fires during the first save when status is still draft. You need to modify your workflow to trigger on the status change event specifically, not just on create. Also check if your workflow has any context restrictions that might exclude mobile transactions.

3

This is a common issue with mobile submissions. The problem is the mobile app’s multi-step save process. Add a custom field that gets set by the mobile app and use that as your trigger condition instead of relying solely on status changes.

4

Thanks everyone. I checked and we do have an ON_EDIT trigger, but it has the same status condition. The workflow execution log shows nothing at all for mobile submissions, not even failed attempts. This makes me think the condition is never being evaluated. Should I remove the status condition entirely and let the workflow run on every edit?

5

Check your workflow’s execution context settings. There might be a restriction on the execution context that excludes mobile API calls. The mobile app uses REST API endpoints that might be filtered out by your workflow configuration.

6

The mobile app creates records differently than the web UI. It might be setting the status after the initial save, which means your ON_CREATE trigger fires before the status is set. Check if adding an ON_EDIT trigger helps, or use a different field condition that’s set during the initial mobile submission.