How approval workflows work
Every Payment Request and Retirement Request is routed through a Workflow Template — a named, reusable approval chain made up of ordered Stages. When someone submits a request, Flow Ledger picks the template configured for that request type and branch (or falls back to the organization-wide "Master" template for that type), and activates its first stage.
Templates and their stages are configured by administrators under Workflow Templates; the day-to-day reviewing happens in Approvals.
Configuring workflow templates
Go to Workflow Templates and click New Template. Give it a Template Name, pick a Type — Advance, Expense, or Retirement — and optionally a Branch. Leave the branch blank to make this the default ("Master") workflow used whenever a specific branch doesn't have its own template for that type.
Every request type needs at least one Master template somewhere, or submissions for that type will fail with a message asking users to contact an administrator.
While a request is actively moving through a template (its workflow instance is still in progress), that template and its stages are locked — you can't edit, delete, or reorder anything until every in-flight request using it has finished.
Configuring stages and parallel groups
Open a template and add Approval Stages. Each stage needs:
- Stage Name.
- Display Order — lower numbers run first; stages sharing the same order run at the same time.
- Skip Below Amount — optional; the stage is skipped automatically when the request total is below this figure.
- Roles that can approve this stage — a checkbox list of roles. Any user holding one of these roles sees the stage in their Approvals inbox. There's no way to assign a specific person, position, or department head directly — approver assignment is always role-based.
- Restrict approvers to submitter's department and Restrict approvers to request's branch — narrow the pool of eligible approvers further (branch restriction is on by default).
- Parallel Group — optional; see below.
Use Parallel Groups when several stages should run together rather than one after another. Each group has a name and a Logic:
- ALL must approve — the group only clears once every stage in it is approved.
- ANY one approves — the group clears as soon as one stage in it is approved, and the rest are automatically cancelled.
If nobody in the system holds a stage's required role (with the branch/department restrictions applied), that stage simply stays active indefinitely — there's no automatic escalation or reassignment. Double-check role coverage when setting up a new stage. Flow Ledger does protect against one thing automatically: if the person who submitted the request would otherwise be the approver for a stage, that stage is skipped rather than letting them approve their own request.
Approving a request
Open Approvals to see your Pending Reviews — every request currently waiting on a stage you're eligible to act on. Click Review to open a request's Request Details, its Line Items, the Action History so far, and the Approval Progress stepper showing every stage in the workflow.
In the Your Decision panel, add a Comment (required for Reject or Send Back, optional for Approve) and choose:
- Approve — clears this stage and moves the request on.
- Send Back — returns the request to the submitter for revision.
- Reject — cancels the entire workflow. You'll be asked to confirm: "Reject this request? This will cancel the entire workflow."
Send Back vs. Reject
These look similar but behave very differently, and it's worth being deliberate about which one you use:
- Send Back is recoverable — the request returns to Sent Back status, the submitter can edit it, and resubmitting sends it straight back to the stage that returned it (not to the start of the workflow).
- Reject is terminal — the request becomes Denied, every remaining stage is cancelled, and there is no way to bring it back. If the request should still go through in some form, use Send Back instead so the submitter isn't forced to start over.
Next, see how approved requests get paid out and disbursed cash is tracked in Cash Management.
