Workflow improvement
Email approvals are not an approval process
Replace inbox chases with a visible queue, clear decision authority and a record you can actually find later.
Quotes, purchases and time-off requests wait in personal inboxes. Nobody knows what is pending, and the ‘approval’ is a reply nobody can find six months later.
Make pending decisions visible to the team, define who may decide what, and keep the decision attached to the work it approved.
What inbox approvals actually cost
An approval buried in email has three hidden costs: the waiting while it sits unread, the re-asking when it is lost, and the reconstruction when someone later needs to prove who agreed to what. None of these appear on a dashboard.
The deeper problem is ambiguity. If two people can approve, or the spending limit is a rumour, every request becomes a small negotiation. Staff learn to route around the process, and the process stops meaning anything.
This is usually not a software problem first. It is an ownership problem: no agreed threshold, no named approver, no single place where pending items live.
Write the decision rules before the tool
List the recurring decisions: quote discounts, purchase orders, overtime, new suppliers, refunds. For each, write the threshold, the approver, the backup approver and the information required to decide. A one-page table beats a policy nobody reads.
Separate ‘notify’ from ‘approve’. Many items only need to be visible to a manager, not blocked by one. Reserving approval for genuine risk keeps the queue short and the real decisions fast.
Decide what happens when the approver is away. A backup rule with a time limit prevents the classic failure: work proceeds anyway, and the record is reconstructed afterwards.
Keep the decision with the work
An approval is evidence. It should live attached to the quote, order or request it concerns—not in a mailbox that leaves with the next departing employee.
A shared queue can start as a structured spreadsheet or a simple workflow tool: requester, item, amount, status, approver, decision date. The discipline matters more than the platform.
Review the queue weekly. Items older than your agreed response time are a process signal, not a personal failing—ask whether the threshold, the information or the staffing is wrong.
An approval rules table to draft with your team
| Decision | Write down |
|---|---|
| Scope | Which recurring decisions need approval vs. visibility only |
| Threshold | The amount or risk level that triggers approval |
| Approver | Named approver plus a backup with a time limit |
| Inputs | The information required to decide without chasing |
| Record | Where the decision is stored and how it is found later |
A suggested planning structure, not legal or audit advice. Adapt thresholds to your organization.
Try it in your operation
- Pick one recurring approval, such as purchase orders over a set amount.
- Write the rule on one page and agree it with the people who request and approve.
- Run a visible queue for four weeks; log waiting time and lost requests.
- Review the queue weekly and adjust the threshold or inputs before adding more decision types.
How to tell whether it helped
Track median time from request to decision, the number of requests that needed re-asking, and whether decisions can be retrieved afterwards. A faster queue that loses its records is not an improvement.
Sources & review notes
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Approval structures interact with your financial controls and, for some organizations, audit requirements. Confirm significant changes with your accountant or advisor.