{"id":5880,"date":"2024-06-25T08:00:51","date_gmt":"2024-06-25T08:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.process.st\/help\/docs\/approvals\/"},"modified":"2025-07-28T14:01:12","modified_gmt":"2025-07-28T14:01:12","slug":"approvals","status":"publish","type":"ht_kb","link":"https:\/\/www.process.st\/help\/docs\/approvals\/","title":{"rendered":"Approvals"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>With our fantastic Approvals feature, you can streamline any processes that need authorization by another person. You can create single instance approvals, multi-stage or sequential approvals within your workflows.<\/p>\n<p>This feature not only helps you to set a structure for your approval process but also saves you heaps of time since hand-offs will become a breeze!<\/p>\n<p><em><strong><i>Users: In order to add or edit Approvals in your workflows, you must be an Administrator or a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.process.st\/help\/docs\/what-is-a-full-member\/\">\u00a0Builder<\/a> who has been given <\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/www.process.st\/help\/docs\/permissions\/\"><i>\u2018edit\u2019<\/i><\/a><i> access by your Administrator.<\/i><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/cjPj3nLEO9k\" width=\"100%\" height=\"406\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><span data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" style=\"display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\">\ufeff<\/span><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h2>Common use cases for approvals<\/h2>\n<h3>Holiday request or paid time off<\/h3>\n<p>Most companies require colleagues to submit a paid time off (PTO) request and have their manager sign off on it. This is a simple one-stage approval that you can set up really quickly.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-16509\" src=\"https:\/\/www.process.st\/help\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/approval-pto.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"100%\" \/><\/p>\n<h3>Approving new hires to your team<\/h3>\n<p>When a candidate is going through your interview process, there may be several levels of approval to go through before sending an offer letter. Different colleagues or managers may be involved in various stages of the process, and each stage requires sign-off before the candidate can progress to the next one.<\/p>\n<h3>Discount approvals on sales deals<\/h3>\n<p>If you offer products or services to customers or clients, there may be occasions when you want to offer a discount. Discounts over a certain percentage need to be signed off and approved by your manager before being agreed upon with the end user.<\/p>\n<h3>Expense report approvals<\/h3>\n<p>When somebody in your business submits an expense report, any expenses under $100 are automatically approved, whilst any over $100 always require manager approval. Using <a href=\"https:\/\/www.process.st\/help\/docs\/conditional-logic\/\">Conditional Logic<\/a>, you can set the tasks in your workflow run to show the approval step only when needed, and the manager can approve or reject only those expenses that need to be dealt with.<\/p>\n<h2>Build your approvals<\/h2>\n<p>Head to your <a href=\"https:\/\/www.process.st\/help\/docs\/library\/\">Library<\/a> and find the workflow that you&#8217;d like to add an approval into. Hover over your workflow&#8217;s name and click the quick link to edit\u00a0the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.process.st\/help\/docs\/what-is-a-workflow\/\">workflow<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Once you&#8217;ve decided where you&#8217;d like the approval to sit in your process, click the task after which you want the approval.<\/p>\n<p>Then click the <strong>+ icon<\/strong> at the bottom of your task list on the left and select <strong>Approval<\/strong>. This button adds a new task, but not just any task, this one has Approval superpowers!<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-8120\" src=\"https:\/\/www.process.st\/help\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/approval-create.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"100%\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Give your approval task a name &#8211; in the example above, we&#8217;ve called it &#8220;HR Manager&#8221;. Next, click on the button in the center of the screen to select the tasks you&#8217;d like to get approved.<\/p>\n<p>You can choose individual tasks, whole sections of your <a href=\"https:\/\/www.process.st\/help\/docs\/difference-workflows-and-runs\/\">workflow run<\/a>\u00a0by clicking on the headings, or you can select all the tasks to approve.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-8121\" src=\"https:\/\/www.process.st\/help\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/approval-select-task.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"100%\" \/><\/p>\n<p>You can double-check which tasks you&#8217;ve selected as they will appear highlighted on the left of your screen. From the center panel, you can <strong>add more tasks<\/strong> to approve, or <strong>delete<\/strong> them via the trash can icon. Once you&#8217;ve selected the tasks you&#8217;d like to be approved, click <strong>Done<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>You can add notes for the task approver to provide them with additional context or instructions. You can format these notes in rich text or hyperlink them, as shown below.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-8122\" src=\"https:\/\/www.process.st\/help\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/approval-add-notes.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"100%\" \/><\/p>\n<h2>Approval assignees<\/h2>\n<h3>On tasks<\/h3>\n<p>It&#8217;s important to always assign a user or a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.process.st\/help\/docs\/groups\/\">group<\/a> to the task\/s you&#8217;re looking to get approved. You can also give these tasks a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.process.st\/help\/docs\/dynamic-due-dates\/\">due date<\/a> to help keep your work on track.<\/p>\n<p>When those tasks are approved or rejected, the user or group will receive an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.process.st\/help\/docs\/email-notifications\/\">email notification<\/a> that those tasks have been dealt with.<\/p>\n<p>If the task\/s have been rejected they will also re-appear in that person&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.process.st\/help\/docs\/my-work\/\">My Work<\/a>, so that they know they have to resubmit the task\/s for approval a second time around.<\/p>\n<p>If there are <em>no task assignees,<\/em> no one will be notified of the approval or rejection of those tasks.<\/p>\n<h3>On the approval task<\/h3>\n<p>It&#8217;s equally as important to assign a user or <a href=\"https:\/\/www.process.st\/help\/docs\/groups\/\">group<\/a> to the approval task itself.<\/p>\n<p>Assign the user or group you would like to handle the approval and give this task a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.process.st\/help\/docs\/dynamic-due-dates\/\">due date<\/a> too if required.<\/p>\n<p>This enables the person assigned to the approval to receive an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.process.st\/help\/docs\/email-notifications\/\">email notification<\/a> when <em>all<\/em> the tasks that need approval have been completed. The Approval task will then also appear in that person&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.process.st\/help\/docs\/my-work\/\">My Work<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Note that if only two out of three tasks to be approved have been completed, the notification won&#8217;t be sent to the approver. Only when all three tasks are complete, will they receive that notification.<\/p>\n<h2>Due dates, stops and permissions<\/h2>\n<p>You should consider setting a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.process.st\/help\/docs\/task-due-dates\/\">due date<\/a>, a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.process.st\/help\/docs\/stop-tasks\/\">stop task<\/a>,\u00a0and set <a href=\"https:\/\/www.process.st\/help\/docs\/task-permissions\/\">permissions<\/a>\u00a0for the tasks to be approved, as well as the approvals task at this point:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A <strong>due date<\/strong> will remind the person approving the task by email when it&#8217;s due, and it will also be prioritized in their My Work<\/li>\n<li>A <strong>stop task<\/strong> will pause the process until the task has been approved<\/li>\n<li>Set the <strong>task\u00a0permission <\/strong>to only show this task to the person assigned to approve it, that way any sensitive data or comments in the approval task (or in the rejection comments) will only be visible to the appropriate person<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The gif below shows you how to add all these steps.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-8123\" src=\"https:\/\/www.process.st\/help\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/approval-settings.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"100%\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Publish the changes to your workflow and you&#8217;re ready to start <a href=\"https:\/\/www.process.st\/help\/docs\/running-workflows\/\">running workflows<\/a> with approvals!<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s it for building your approvals, so now we&#8217;ll move on to seeing how you can submit tasks for approval in a workflow run.<\/p>\n<h2>Submitting tasks for approval<\/h2>\n<p>If you are the person filling out the workflow run, you&#8217;ll work through the tasks as normal, completing each one assigned to you.<\/p>\n<p>If you see an approval task after the tasks you completed, it may be assigned to another user to review your work. You need to wait for them to approve or reject your tasks before you can move on with the workflow run.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-8124\" src=\"https:\/\/www.process.st\/help\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/approval-waiting.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"100%\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.process.st\/help\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/approval-waiting.png 1024w, https:\/\/www.process.st\/help\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/approval-waiting-300x150.png 300w, https:\/\/www.process.st\/help\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/approval-waiting-768x384.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>If you don&#8217;t see an approval task, it may be hidden from you because <a href=\"https:\/\/www.process.st\/help\/docs\/task-permissions\/\">task permissions<\/a> are preventing you from seeing it. You may need to wait for an email notification about the tasks you submitted for approval before being able to complete the workflow run.<\/p>\n<p>Whether you can see the approval task or not, you&#8217;ll need to wait for the notification that your task(s) has been approved before being able to continue working through the rest of the workflow run and eventually, completing it.<\/p>\n<h2>Approving or rejecting<\/h2>\n<h3>You are the person asking for approval<\/h3>\n<p>When you check off a task\/s for approval, the person assigned to the approval task receives an email notifying them of the information you submitted. A new Approval task will also appear in their <a href=\"https:\/\/www.process.st\/help\/docs\/my-work\/\">My Work<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Once they have decided, you will receive an email notification with their comments (if they added any) and the approval status.<\/p>\n<p>If it has been rejected, click the task name in your email to take you directly back to the task in question. The task will be unchecked for you to <strong>amend<\/strong> the information you entered, <strong>complete<\/strong> it again, and send it back to the approver for another review.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-8125\" src=\"https:\/\/www.process.st\/help\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/approval-rejected-task.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"100%\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.process.st\/help\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/approval-rejected-task.png 1024w, https:\/\/www.process.st\/help\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/approval-rejected-task-300x150.png 300w, https:\/\/www.process.st\/help\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/approval-rejected-task-768x384.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Once the task has been approved, you&#8217;ll receive another <a href=\"https:\/\/www.process.st\/help\/docs\/email-notifications\/\">email notification<\/a> to let you know, and then you can click the blue link, which takes you back to the workflow run.<\/p>\n<p>Now, if there are no more tasks waiting for approval, you can go ahead and complete the workflow run. Cue the confetti!<\/p>\n<h3>You are the person rejecting or approving a task<\/h3>\n<p>You can see tasks that you&#8217;ve been asked to approve in your email. Click the task name or click &#8216;View in Process Street&#8217; to view the task in Process Street. You can also approve or reject the task straight from the email.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-16520\" src=\"https:\/\/www.process.st\/help\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/approval-email.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"100%\" \/><\/p>\n<p>You can also find tasks to approve in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.process.st\/help\/docs\/my-work\/\">My Work<\/a>. Use the <em>All types<\/em> to only show Approvals tasks you need to address.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-8126\" src=\"https:\/\/www.process.st\/help\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/approval-my-work.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"100%\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Approve or reject it with or without comments as appropriate.<\/p>\n<h4>Reject<\/h4>\n<p>If you reject a task, you have the option to reject it with or without adding comments saying why you&#8217;ve made that decision and asking for updates to be made to the information.<\/p>\n<p>Click the <strong>comments bubble<\/strong> next to the reject button to add a comment, or click <strong>Reject<\/strong> to send without comments.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Note:<\/strong> You cannot add rejection comments from emails. You can only add them when you&#8217;re in Process Street&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.process.st\/help\/docs\/approvals\/#approvals-with-apps\">mobile app<\/a> or the browser version.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-8127\" src=\"https:\/\/www.process.st\/help\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/approval-reject-with-comments.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"100%\" \/><\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;re sending the rejection <strong>with<\/strong> comments, after you&#8217;ve clicked the comments bubble, type your notes and click <strong>Reject and Send Comment<\/strong> to notify the person who submitted the information that they need to make changes.<\/p>\n<p>Once you have rejected a task, the Approval task will disappear from My Work, until the task has been re-submitted.<\/p>\n<p>This process will loop back around to you until you approve the task.<\/p>\n<h4>Approve<\/h4>\n<p>In case you want to add a note with your approval, you have the option to approve a task with comments as well.<\/p>\n<p>Click the <strong>comments bubble<\/strong> next to the approve button to add a comment, or click <strong>Approve<\/strong> to send without comments.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Note:<\/strong> You cannot add approval comments from emails. You can only add them when you&#8217;re in Process Street&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.process.st\/help\/docs\/approvals\/#approvals-with-apps\">mobile app<\/a> or the browser version.<\/p>\n<p>When you approve a task, the person who submitted it will receive a notification that allows them to go back into the workflow run, where they will be allowed to complete any more tasks they need to work on.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-8128\" src=\"https:\/\/www.process.st\/help\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/approval-approved-with-comments.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"100%\" \/><\/p>\n<p>They can complete the workflow run once all the approvals in that workflow run have been signed off.<\/p>\n<p>You can edit your decision to approve this task if the situation changes and you now need to reject it, or if you&#8217;d like to make a change to your comments. Go to the approval task and hover over the task you approved then click <strong>Edit status<\/strong> next to the task name to reject it.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-8129\" src=\"https:\/\/www.process.st\/help\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/approval-edit.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"100%\" \/><\/p>\n<h2>Approvals with apps<\/h2>\n<p>If you&#8217;re using our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.process.st\/help\/docs\/slack-app\/\">Slack app<\/a>, you can Approve or Reject tasks without even needing to open Process Street. If you would like to reject with comments, you will need to click to open the workflow run.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-9649\" src=\"https:\/\/www.process.st\/help\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/Slack-approval.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"100%\" \/><\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;re using our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.process.st\/help\/docs\/iphone-app\/\">iOS mobile app<\/a>, you can approve, reject, or reject it with comments. To reject with comments, click &#8220;<strong>Reject<\/strong>&#8220;, type your comments, then click &#8220;<strong>Reject and Send Comment<\/strong>&#8220;.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-7692\" src=\"https:\/\/www.process.st\/help\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/iPhone-Reject-approval-w-comments.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"50%\" \/><\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;re using our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.process.st\/help\/docs\/android-app\/\">Android mobile app<\/a>, you can approve or reject, with or without comments. To add comments with your rejection or approval, click the comments bubble, type your comments, then click &#8220;<strong>Reject\/Approve and Send Comment<\/strong>&#8220;.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-16592\" src=\"https:\/\/www.process.st\/help\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/android-approval.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"50%\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Don&#8217;t forget if you need help setting up Approvals, you can contact our <a href=\"mailto:support@mail.process-street.com\">support team<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With our fantastic Approvals feature, you can streamline any processes that need authorization by another person. You can create single instance approvals, multi-stage or sequential approvals within your workflows. This feature not only helps you to set a structure for your approval process but also saves you heaps of time since hand-offs will become a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"available_plan":"All plans","available_product":"Workflows","footnotes":""},"ht_kb_category":[168,158],"ht_kb_tag":[325],"class_list":["post-5880","ht_kb","type-ht_kb","status-publish","hentry","ht_kb_category-run-workflows","ht_kb_category-build-edit-workflows","ht_kb_tag-approvals"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.process.st\/help\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ht_kb\/5880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.process.st\/help\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ht_kb"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.process.st\/help\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/ht_kb"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.process.st\/help\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.process.st\/help\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ht_kb\/5880\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9271,"href":"https:\/\/www.process.st\/help\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ht_kb\/5880\/revisions\/9271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.process.st\/help\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"ht_kb_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.process.st\/help\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ht_kb_category?post=5880"},{"taxonomy":"ht_kb_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.process.st\/help\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ht_kb_tag?post=5880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}