Approval workflows
Form approval workflows, approved from the inbox
Build the form, draw the approval steps, and name who approves each one. Approvers decide from an email link with no account; deadlines escalate what stalls; every decision lands on the record with a name and a timestamp. Free to start, on every plan.
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Approve from the inbox, no login
The approver gets an email with their own link, sees only the fields you picked — the amount and the reason, not the whole application — and approves or declines with a comment. Managers, clients, landlords and partners outside your organization approve the same way.
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Multi-step, drawn as a diagram
Submitted → Manager review → Finance review → Approved. Each step is a state with its own moves, and each move names who may take it. Returned-with-questions and resubmit are moves too, so a request is never stuck in an email thread.
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Deadlines that escalate
A step can carry a deadline and the move to take when it passes. Stalled approvals stop being invisible: the record escalates on its own, and the audit log records that the deadline did it.
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Every decision on the record
Who approved, when, from where, with what comment — on the record’s Approvals tab and in an append-only audit log. When someone asks "who signed this off?", the answer is a read, not a hunt through email.
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What happens next is automatic
An approval can send the notification, generate the PDF, request the e-signature, ask for payment or create the next form’s record. You configure it once; every approval keeps the same promise.
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The requester can see where it is
Give the submitter a status link and they can check progress themselves — the current step and its reference number, never the answers or your internal notes. Fewer "any update?" emails.
Where it fits
Approval forms people actually build
Each of these is a form, a few states and an approval request — configured in the browser, changed the day the process changes.
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Purchase requests
Line items with a total the server computes, manager then finance approval over a threshold, a purchase order PDF on approval.
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Expense claims
Receipts attached, the total added up on the server, approve or return with questions, then marked paid.
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Time-off and change requests
A short form, one approver by email, the decision mailed back to the requester automatically.
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Vendor and membership applications
Review the application, approve before you charge, and send the welcome pack on the approving move.
Start from a template — expense claim, project request, vendor onboarding or membership application — or read how workflows work underneath. Designing the process first? Read how to set up a form approval workflow, or the guides for adding approvals to Microsoft Forms and Google Forms.
Questions
Approvals, plainly
Do approvers need an account?
No. A workflow action emails each approver their own approve/decline link. They open it, see the fields you chose to show them, and decide — no login, no seat, no password to forget. The decision lands on the record with their name, a comment and a timestamp.
Can a form need more than one approval?
Yes, in two ways. Name several approvers on one request and the move fires once everyone has said yes; any no reads as declined. Or chain steps in the workflow — manager, then finance — so each approval is its own state with its own approvers, deadline and notifications.
What if nobody approves?
Give the waiting state a deadline — 48 hours, say — and name the move it takes when time runs out, such as Escalate. The platform takes that move itself, with the same conditions and notifications a person’s click would have, and the audit log says the deadline did it. An approval request can also expire; an expired request never counts as a yes.
What can an approval link actually do?
Exactly what you delegated and nothing more: take the one move you named for approve, and optionally another for decline. If the record has moved on by the time the link is opened, the verdict is recorded and nothing moves. Only people who can edit submissions can see the links in the app; people who can only read them see the verdicts.
Can the next step depend on the approval?
Yes. The verdict is recorded on the submission as approval_status, so any later move can require approval_status to be "approved" as its condition — and because the server records it, a submitter cannot type it in.
Which plans include approvals?
Every plan, the Free plan included. Paid plans add seats, volume and features like e-signatures and email-to-form; the approval step itself is never behind a paywall.
Put your approval process on a form this week
A form, the steps, the approvers — built by the team that owns the process, on the Free plan.
No card required.