How to work
Designing an approval route that does not jam
A good route is not measured by how many steps it has. It is measured by whether any single person being unavailable can stop the whole thing.
Start by asking what each step answers
Before adding anyone to the route, ask what question they answer that nobody else can. If there isn't one, the step should not exist.
| Step | The question they answer |
|---|---|
| Department head | Is this genuinely needed for the work? |
| Engineering | Is the specification right? Will it fit what we already have? |
| Finance | Is there budget? Is it over the limit? |
| A director | Is this worth it for the company overall? |
| Purchasing | Is this the best price we can get? |
Most companies under fifty people need three steps. Adding a fourth should come with a reason you can say out loud in one sentence.
The real problem is never the number of steps
Routes break when a step has exactly one name on it and that person is off sick, on site, or in meetings all day. The company's purchasing stops and waits.
The fix that actually works is letting a step name several people, any one of whom can approve. Not a designated deputy who has to be activated first — nobody does that when the job is urgent.
Approval limits
Not every request needs a director. The common approach is thresholds:
- under the first limit — the department head finishes it
- over the first — finance joins
- over the second — it reaches a director
The numbers depend on your size. What matters more than the numbers is that everyone knows them. If people have to guess how high a request will go, you have not really set them.
Three changes that speed up any route immediately
- Approvers find out it is their turn without somebody walking over to tell them
- The documents travel with the request. A quotation you have to go hunting for in a chat thread is lost time, every single time
- The requester can see whose desk it is on, so they stop asking purchasing every morning
None of these is about the form. It is why companies move off paper — not because paper is bad, but because paper cannot tell you where it currently is.
Done chasing signatures?
Oplinqa raises the request, routes it for approval in order, and keeps the finished paperwork in your own company folder — not on somebody else's cloud. Free during the beta.
See what Oplinqa does