Approval Processes in a Company: How to Set Them Up Quickly and Under Control

What are approval processes in a company and why do they affect the speed of the whole operation?

Approval processes in a company define the rules and steps by which internal requests, expenses, contracts, orders and access rights get decided. When the setup is unclear, a company loses more than time. It loses visibility, control over accountability, and the ability to decide without needless waiting.

In practice this covers every situation where one person submits a request for confirmation and another has to decide yes, no, or send it back for completion. Most often that means invoices, purchases, leave, business trips, discounts, quotes, contracts, marketing budgets or internal requests between departments.

The problem does not arise only when an approval takes a long time. The greater risk comes when it is not precisely defined:

• who is next in line,
• what the decision should be based on,
• by when they have to respond,
• what happens when the supporting documents are incomplete,
• where the outcome can be looked up afterwards.

If the supporting material is scattered across e-mails, chat, Excel and paper, there is no centralisation of company data. Approval then stops being a managed process and becomes a matter of hunting for information and chasing colleagues.

Well-designed approval is therefore part of the broader digitalisation of a company. This is not only about convenience. It is about the company deciding faster, having an audit trail, reducing chaos between departments, and not depending on who happens to notice an e-mail in their inbox.

Which approval processes are worth tackling first?

The approvals worth tackling first are those that recur often, have clear rules, and today generate the most chasing, waiting or manual retyping. The best first candidate is usually not the most complex process in the company, but the one where the benefit shows quickly and the team feels it in practice.

Start where 3 factors coincide: high volume, a repeatable procedure, and a noticeable impact on money, time or operations. Most often that means these areas:

• Invoices and expenses – who checks factual accuracy, who checks the budget and who gives the final approval before payment.
• Purchases and orders – who can order, at what amount a further level of approval is needed and how a supplier is vetted.
• Leave, absences and business trips – who approves the dates, team capacity and the budget.
• Contracts and amendments – who assesses the commercial terms, the legal risk and the final signature.
• Discounts, quotes and commercial exceptions – who authorises a departure from the standard margin or terms.
• Marketing budgets and campaigns – who approves the brief, the budget, the deadline and accountability for the result.
• Access, permissions and internal requests – who authorises entry to systems, role changes or IT requests.
• Project changes and scope extensions – who approves a change of scope, deadline or budget.

If you are unsure which processes are the biggest problem, a list of the most common company processes suited to automation will help, along with the signals by which you recognise that automation is missing in a company. In practice the winner is usually the process where people most often ask: where is it now, who is supposed to approve it, and why is it still sitting there?

How do you design an approval process that protects the company without holding it up?

A good approval process should protect the company from mistakes, not slow down every step. It works when it has a clear trigger, precisely defined roles, limits, deadlines and exceptions, and an outcome recorded so that it is traceable without further explanation between departments.

The most practical approach is to design the process as a simple decision map. For each type of approval, write down:

1. What is actually being approved – a document, an amount, a change, a request, access or a task.
2. Who triggers the process – an employee, a manager, a salesperson, a buyer, HR or the system.
3. Which supporting documents are mandatory – the budget, an attachment, a reason, a deadline, the supplier, the cost centre.
4. Who recommends and who gives final approval – these roles need not always be the same.
5. Which limits branch the decision – amount, risk, type of cost, department, client, deadline.
6. By when a response is due – and who takes over the process in someone's absence.
7. What the outcome is – approved, rejected, returned for completion, escalated.
8. Where the record stays – the comment, date, status and history of the decision.

The most common mistake is using the same approval flow for everything. Buying office supplies, changing a commercial discount and signing a contract do not carry the same risk, so they should not carry the same number of steps either. If you want processes to work across teams, it helps to connect the company's departments through software first, and only then address automating the individual steps.

The practical rule is straightforward: approval should be as short as it can be, while still precise enough that the company knows who decided, on what basis and with what impact. That is exactly the direction in which it pays to make company processes more efficient.

What types of approval workflow exist and when should you use them?

The type of approval workflow is chosen according to whether the company should decide sequentially, all at once, conditionally, or with an automatic stand-in when there is a delay. There is no universal model. The right setup depends on the risk, the value of the request, the number of departments, and how often exceptions appear in the process.

Sequential approval

Suits cases where each step follows the previous one. First the head of department, then finance, then the managing director. The advantage is a clear order and strong control. The drawback tends to be a longer time when there are too many steps.

Parallel approval

Used when several people can comment independently on the same request at once — sales and legal on a contract, for example. It shortens the wait, but it requires defining precisely whether all approvals are needed or only some.

Conditional approval

The workflow branches by a rule — the amount, the type of cost, the client or the risk. Smaller requests take the shorter route, more sensitive ones the longer one. This model is often the most efficient, because it does not slow ordinary business down with the same steps as exceptions.

Delegated and escalating approval

Used where the process must not rest on one person. If an approver does not respond within the set time, the request moves to a deputy or a supervisor. That prevents invoices, contracts or internal requests being blocked.

Hybrid workflows

In most companies this is a combination of the approaches above. A sequential start, a parallel check and a conditional final branch by budget, for example. What matters is not having a technologically interesting model, but one the team understands and that matches how the company actually works.

Where do companies most often lose time and control in approvals?

Companies most often lose time not because they approve too much, but because they approve unclearly. When rules, supporting documents, deputies and connections between systems are missing, the result is chasing, working around the process, and decisions that cannot afterwards be explained or verified.

The most common bottlenecks look unremarkable but recur daily:

• approval happens through e-mail or chat and it is unclear which version is the latest,
• one person holds the whole process and everything stops when they are away,
• the same procedure applies to both small and risky requests,
• mandatory fields are missing and requests come back for completion,
• people retype the same data into several systems,
• departments have different rules and everyone interprets the process their own way,
• final approval does arrive, but without a comment and without history.

A very common mistake is a company automating a process before simplifying it. That merely speeds up the chaos. If approval is needlessly long, confusing or dependent on manual chasing, the inefficient processes in the company have to be named first, and only then moved into a system.

Another problem is that nobody treats administrative steps as a priority. That is exactly why it pays to look at automating administration in a companyas well, because approval is often only the visible part of a broader operational problem. Once the unnecessary steps are removed, it is not just approval speed that improves, but the quality of the supporting material and the visibility of where the company gets stuck most often.

Which software should you choose for approvals, and when are e-mail, Excel or a form no longer enough?

The right approval software depends on the complexity of the process, the number of people, the need for an audit trail, and how many systems have to communicate with each other. E-mail and Excel may be enough for exceptions. But once approval affects money, deadlines or several departments, a company usually needs a managed workflow.

When choosing, it pays to think in four levels:

1. E-mail, chat or a simple form

Suitable only at very low volume and low risk. There is no history of decisions, no rule-based notifications and no reliable overview of where the process stands.

2. A shared spreadsheet or a basic form flow

Suitable as a short-term answer for one simple process. It hits its limits on exceptions, branching, user permissions and the need to connect to other systems.

3. A CRM or workflow system

Makes sense where approval relates to sales, jobs, invoicing, service, HR or internal requests. The advantages are states, roles, notifications, history and one place for the whole process. If approval feeds into finance, connecting the CRM and the accounting systemis essential so that data is not retyped by hand.

4. Custom software and AI automation

This is the right choice when a company cannot fit inside generic rules — when the process depends on your own pricing, several levels of authority, specific documents or links to several internal tools, for example. That is when custom developmentmakes sense, building approval around the company's real processes rather than around the limits of an off-the-shelf tool.

AI has a place in approvals mainly as an assistant: it reads data out of documents, fills in supporting information, sorts requests or drafts a proposed next step. The final decision, however, stays with the company and its rules.

How do you measure whether the new approval process genuinely works?

You do not recognise a working approval process by the fact that it is digital. You recognise it by shorter waiting, fewer chases, rules that hold, and results that are easy to assess. If a company does not measure how a request passes from submission to decision, it very quickly reverts to a sense that everything is working by guesswork.

So before rolling anything out, record a simple baseline: how long the process takes today, how many people are involved, how often a request comes back for completion and where most of the waiting occurs. Then track these indicators in particular:

• the average time from submission to approval,
• the time spent at each step,
• the share of requests handled by the agreed deadline,
• the number of escalations and chases,
• the number of returns for incomplete supporting documents,
• the number of manual interventions outside the system,
• the most common reasons for rejection or delay.

It is important to measure quality as well as speed. If approvals are faster but the process works around the rules, or staff still send supplementary information on the side, the problem has merely moved elsewhere.

To keep processes in order over the long term, it helps to see approval as part of the broader digitalisation of company processesrather than as an isolated form. And if you need to keep a practical management view of the results, the same principles apply to how companies systematically improve their processes: a clear status, specific data, and a precisely named place where the process slows down.

What should you do next if you want to speed up approvals in your company?

If you want to speed up approvals, do not start by choosing a tool. Start with 1 specific process — the one that today generates the most chasing, delay or ambiguity. Once you have correctly named the rules, the roles and the exceptions, the technology stops being a puzzle and becomes the logical next step.

The practical procedure looks like this:

1. Choose one process with high volume or high impact.
2. Describe the current state from submission to the final decision.
3. Write down the rules and limits by amount, risk, department or type of request.
4. Define the owners of each step including deputies and escalations.
5. Decide which systems have to be connected and which data should stay in one place.
6. Run a pilot on one process, and only then extend the solution.

This approach is considerably safer than digitalising everything at once. The company sees faster what works, where the exceptions are and which decision rules still need refining. If you already know your approvals depend on several departments, your own internal rules or connections to other systems, the natural continuation is implementing a CRM system.

At BeCode we help companies turn approvals from an e-mail merry-go-round into a workflow built around real rules, roles and data. If you need a process that adapts to your pricing, your documents, your levels of authority or your internal systems, take a look at what software adapted to your processescan look like.

Frequently asked questions

How long does it take to introduce an approval workflow?

How long depends on the number of steps, exceptions and systems to be connected. Simple internal approval tends to be faster than a multi-level process linked to a CRM, accounting or HR. What is essential is not to skip the analysis of the rules, because that is where it is decided whether the workflow will genuinely work.

Is digitalising approvals suitable for a small or medium-sized company too?

Yes — it often brings a quick effect to smaller and medium-sized companies in particular. When 1 person holds several roles at once, the whole team feels every delay or manual search. Well-designed approval reduces chaos, shortens waiting and gives the owner better visibility without additional administration.

Can approvals be done on a phone?

Yes — if the solution is designed properly, approval can work on a phone without losing visibility or control. What matters, though, is that the phone does not mean merely tapping to consent, but also access to the right supporting material, the comment, the history and the next step of the process.

What happens when an approver does not respond?

A properly designed workflow anticipates this. After a set time the process can send a reminder, move the request to a deputy or escalate it to a supervisor. The goal is not to bypass accountability, but to stop the company being held up by one absent or overloaded person.

Do we have to change our existing systems to digitalise approvals?

Not always. In many cases it is enough to connect what the company already uses correctly and add workflow logic on top of the existing data. Changing systems makes more sense when the current tools cannot work with roles, states, an audit trail or the company's own rules.