By use case: Approval workflows
Approval workflow automation
Requests reach the right approver, decisions take one click, and every step is on the record.
- First workflow live
- Request, usually inside the first sprint
- Usually owned by
- Finance leads chasing purchase and expense sign-offs
- Built on
- Slack, Microsoft Teams, n8n
- Judged on
- Time to decision and Requests waiting
In short
Approval workflow automation sends each request, whether a purchase, expense, discount, contract or piece of content, to the right approver based on rules you set, lets them approve or reject from Slack, Teams or email, chases them when it stalls, and writes the decision back to the system it came from. SBD builds it with a full audit trail, delegation for absences, and an AI step only where it helps, such as summarising a request or flagging what breaks policy.
Who this is for
The people who usually own approval workflows.
- Finance leads chasing purchase and expense sign-offs
- Sales managers approving discounts and terms
- Marketing and compliance teams reviewing content
- Founders who are the approval step for everything
Is this you?
If three of these sound like your week, this page is about your team.
- Approvals are given in chat and not recorded anywhere
- Requesters ask where their request is
- One person going on leave stops spending
- Auditors ask for evidence that takes days to gather
- Discounts are approved differently by each manager
What it costs today
Where approval workflows loses the hours.
Approvals happen in chat threads
A yes in WhatsApp or a thumbs-up on Slack is the only record, and it is gone when someone needs to find it.
Nobody knows where it is stuck
The requester asks around. The approver is travelling. The request waits a week for a two-minute decision.
Rules live in people
Who signs what above which amount is known by the finance lead, not written anywhere a system can follow.
Auditors ask for evidence
Proving who approved a payment, a discount or a published claim means digging through inboxes.
For finance and compliance
A yes should leave a record.
Tell us what your team asks permission for and who says yes. We will map the rules and show you where requests wait longest.
Map your approvals
By company size
Approval workflows at 10 people, and at 1,000.
- 1 to 10
The founder approves everything by message, and nothing is written down.
- 11 to 50
A few managers, rules in their heads, and requests that wait for someone to be back.
- 51 to 200
Approvals split across email, chat and three tools, with no single place to see what is pending.
- 201 to 1,000
Several entities and thresholds, auditors asking for evidence, and delegation that nobody set up.
What we build
What we build for approval workflows teams.
- 01
Rules as a table you own
Approval chains by type, amount, department and role in one table. Change a threshold without touching the workflow.
- 02
Approve where people already are
Approve, reject or ask a question from a Slack or Teams message, an email button or a mobile-friendly page. The request carries the context needed to decide.
- 03
Reminders, delegation and escalation
Reminders on a schedule, out-of-office delegation, and escalation to the next approver after a set time.
- 04
Audit trail and policy checks
Every request, comment and decision logged with time and person. An optional AI step summarises long requests and flags anything outside policy for the approver.
The workflows
The approval workflows workflows, and what sets each one off.
- 01 Request
When a form, CRM deal, bill or document is submitted for approval
ThenMatched to a rule and sent to the first approver
- 02 Decide
When the approver opens the message
ThenApprove, reject or ask, with the context attached
- 03 Chase
When no decision within the set time
ThenReminder sent, then escalated or delegated
- 04 Write back
When final approval given
ThenStatus updated in the source system and the requester told
- 05 Policy flag
When a request is outside the usual bounds
ThenHighlighted for the approver with the reason
The numbers we move
How a approval workflows build is judged.
Every build has a number written into the blueprint. These are the ones approval workflows builds are measured by, and how we measure them.
| Metric | Before | After | How it is measured |
|---|---|---|---|
| Time to decision | Days, and unknown | Measured, and usually same day | Median time from request submitted to final decision |
| Requests waiting | Found when someone complains | One list with ages | Open requests and their age, by approver, daily |
| Approvals with evidence | Partial | Every one | Share of executed items with a logged approval, checked monthly |
| Escalations | Not tracked | Counted and reviewed | Requests escalated after the reminder window, per month |
Systems we connect in approval workflows
What is usually already there, and what we add.
Anything with an API or a database we can read works the same way. Each tool links to its page in the integrations directory.
-
Slack - MT Microsoft Teams
- Gmail
-
Xero - QuickBooks
-
HubSpot -
Zoho Books -
Supabase
Proof
Proof from builds like this.
- Customer story
Property operations automations and agent fleet
A decision queue and policy engine where routine actions are approved in bulk, risky ones always go to a person, and a kill switch stops any agent.
Read the story - Customer story
Internal operations tool replacing SmartSuite
An operations tool with quotations, contracts and projects, and roles enforced on the server instead of shared logins.
Read the story
How it starts
An audit of the approval workflows work your team still does by hand.
One to two weeks. We map the workflows, put an hours-a-week figure on each, and give you a costed blueprint in order of payback. The audit is credited in full to the build.
- Week 1 to 2Audit. We sit with the people who do the work and map it.
- Week 3Blueprint. Fixed scope, fixed price, the first build chosen by payback.
- Week 4 onBuild in two-week sprints, working software every second Friday.
- After go-liveSixty days of hypercare, then a care plan or run it yourself.
What this does not do
So the scope is clear before the call.
- Decisions that need a meeting. A workflow cannot replace a real discussion.
- A team where one person approves a few things a month. A shared form is enough.
- Automating the approval itself. A person decides; we make the route fast and visible.
Terms, defined
Approval workflows terms, in plain English.
- Approval chain
- The ordered list of people who must agree before a request is final.
- Delegation
- Passing approval authority to someone else for a set period, usually while away.
- Audit trail
- A record of who requested, who decided, when, and what they saw at the time.
Questions
What people ask about approval workflows automation.
Our accounting tool already has approvals.
Then we use them. Most teams also approve things that never touch accounting, such as discounts in the CRM, content before it goes out, or access requests. We bring those into one trail.
Can approvers decide from their phone?
Yes. Slack, Teams and email approvals work on mobile, and the fallback page is built for small screens.
Does AI make the decision?
No. A person approves. AI can summarise a long request or point out that a discount is above the usual band, so the approver sees it first.
What if the rules are different per department?
The rules table handles that. Each row is a condition and an approver chain, so departments, entities and currencies can differ.
How much does it cost?
Start with the $500 Automation Audit, credited to the build. Workflow automation starts at $1,500 and a dashboard at $3,000, with the fixed price set after the audit.
Reading
- Systems
How much should an AI agent be allowed to do?
An agent with an unscoped token dropped a production database and its backups in nine seconds. Our rule: read widely, write narrowly, cap spend, escalate.
- Operations
Who noticed when the workflow stopped?
Most automation failures are silent: the run shows green and nothing happens for weeks. How it happens in Zapier and n8n, its cost, and the four checks we add.
Related
- Function
Compliance and risk
Make the audit trail a by-product of doing the work, not a project you run afterwards.
- Function
Finance and accounting
Close faster, chase less, and see the numbers without waiting for month end.
- Use case
Quote generation
Enquiries read as they arrive, items matched to your catalogue or item master, prices and margins applied by rule, and the quote approved and sent the same day.
- Use case
Invoice processing
Supplier invoices read as they arrive, matched to the order and the goods received, approved by the right person and posted to your accounting system. People only see the ones that do not match.
By use case: Invoice processing, Lead routing, Customer onboarding, Employee onboarding, Quote generation, Order to cash, Ticket triage, Document extraction, Inventory sync, Weekly reporting, Client portals
Approval workflows
Get the approval workflows hours back.
Bring the one approval workflows workflow your team still runs by hand. You leave the call with a yes or no on fit and the first thing we would build.
Book the call