What goes wrong when approvals live in email
- The yes gets lost. It sits in a thread with twelve replies, or in the inbox of someone who has left.
- Nobody knows where it stands. To find out, you have to ask, and asking slows things down too.
- Things get approved without the data. The email says “can you approve this?” with no budget, no quotes and no receipt.
- Steps get skipped. If the email goes straight to the director, nobody checks first whether there was budget.
- There is no deadline. An approval with no date waits in the inbox while everything else piles up.
The five parts of an approval process that works
1. Named stages
For example: request, review, approval and closed. Every request is always in one stage, and anyone can see which.
2. Requirements to move forward
What has to be there before a request moves on: the amount, the receipt, the quotes or the signature. If something is missing, it does not move. This part alone prevents much of the back-and-forth.
3. Who approves what
A simple table, written down and known to everyone. It is usually called an approval matrix:
| What is approved | Up to | Who approves |
|---|---|---|
| Materials purchase | $1,000 | Department manager |
| Materials purchase | $10,000 | Operations director |
| Materials purchase | Over $10,000 | General manager |
| Time off | Any length | Direct manager |
| Project scope change | Any amount | Project manager and customer |
The amounts are an example. What matters is that the table exists and nobody has to guess whom to ask.
4. Deadline and backup
Every approval has a deadline. If it passes, the approver gets a reminder and, if there is still no answer, it goes to their backup. A vacation should not stop a department’s purchasing.
5. A trail for every decision
Who approved, when, with which data in front of them and with what comment. Also who rejected and why. That trail is what you show in an audit or a dispute.
Approve from a phone, with no user account
Many approvals stall because the approver does not use the system every day: an executive, a customer or a supplier. Asking them to log in to another app, with a username and password, guarantees the delay.
The alternative is a link. The approver gets it, sees the request with its data and approves or rejects from their phone. To count as a trail, the link has to identify them, for example with a code, and record who approved and when.
Examples across departments
- Purchasing: a request does not move to approval without the three quotes attached.
- HR: the manager approves time off from their phone, with the team calendar in view.
- Projects: the project manager and the customer approve a scope change before it is scheduled.
- Sales: the director approves a larger-than-usual discount before the quote goes out.
- Maintenance: the customer approves a repair estimate before the part is ordered.
On projects, an approved change is also what justifies a new baseline. Without approval, a variance is still a variance.
How many levels
As few as possible. Every level adds days, and after the second or third, people approve without looking because “the last person must have checked.”
Two questions help remove levels:
- Has this level ever rejected anything? If it never rejects, it is not approving: it is signing.
- Could it be a notification instead of an approval? Often, an executive only wants to know, not decide.
What to measure
- Time from request to decision, using the median, not the average.
- Requests sent back for missing data. If there are many, the first stage is missing requirements.
- Approvals that time out and go to the backup. If it is always the same person, change the process instead of insisting.
If you want to put a number on the time spent chasing approvals today, use the ROI calculator with your own data.
A good approval process is boring: the request arrives complete, reaches the right person, has a deadline and leaves a trail. Nobody has to remember anything.
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