What Is an Approval Workflow? Digitizing Purchase and Leave Approvals

An approval workflow is a set of rules that defines whose approval a request (a purchase, leave, an expense, a contract or a document) goes through, in what order and under which conditions. Digitizing it means taking those rules out of paper forms and email chains and moving them into a system where the request is opened through a form, goes to the right person automatically and every step is recorded. The healthiest start is to pick the single most frequent request type and write its rules down.

What is an approval workflow, and why doesn't email work?

In document management systems, an approval flow defines the order in which a document is initialed and signed, and by whom. Inside a company the logic is the same: who opens the request, who looks at it first, when it moves up a level, and what happens once it is approved.

Email cannot carry this because it contains no rules. The request goes to three people: one is on leave, one misses the message, and the third replies "looks fine to me", without it being clear whether that is an approval or an opinion. A few days later, nobody can say for certain which amount was approved, against which attachment. Paper forms have a similar problem: a form waiting for a signature sits on a desk, if it is lost the process starts over, and there is no reliable trail of who approved what and when.

What are the building blocks of an approval workflow?

Whatever the request type, a digital approval workflow is built from the same components:

• Request form: the information the approver needs to decide is asked for as required fields. A request opened with missing information forces the approver to ask questions and send it back.
• Approvers and roles: approvers are defined by role ("department manager", "finance lead"), not by name. When a person changes, you do not have to rebuild the flow.
• Rules: which levels apply depending on amount, category, budget status or department.
• Deadlines and escalation: who is reminded, or who the request escalates to, if an approver does not respond within a set time.
• Delegation: who approves in place of a manager who is on leave.
• Audit trail: at every step, who approved or rejected, when and with what reason.

If one of these is missing, the flow either gets stuck or drifts back to email. The gap we see most often is that delegation and escalation are never defined: the system is in place, but one manager's vacation holds up every request.

How do you set up a purchase approval workflow?

Purchasing is the best place to start digitizing, because it recurs often, is measured in amounts and is directly linked to the budget. To design it, answer these questions in order:

1. What goes on the request form? The product or service description, quantity, estimated amount, justification, budget line, proposed supplier and any quotes.
2. Where are the amount thresholds? For example, routing requests below an amount you set to the department manager only, and those above it to finance as well. Set the thresholds according to your company's authority matrix.
3. How are out-of-budget requests handled? Sending a request for an item with no budget up a level automatically makes the approver's job easier.
4. What happens after approval? The approved request becomes an order, the purchasing team is notified and the record is passed to the ERP.

The last step is often skipped. The approval goes digital, but the order is still keyed into the ERP by hand; the same data is written twice and the margin for error remains.

What matters in leave and expense approvals?

For leave requests, the approver needs to know three things: the employee's remaining leave balance, who else on the team is off on the same dates, and who will cover the work. If this information is visible on the form or the approval screen, the manager decides at a glance. If not, the request bounces back and forth with questions.

For expense approvals, documents and rules come first. Attaching the receipt or invoice should be mandatory, the limits in the company expense policy (accommodation, meals, travel) should be built into the form as rules, and the approved expense should be recorded in a form that can be passed to accounting. Automatically flagging items that break the policy means the approver does not have to inspect every receipt one by one.

Does a digital approval replace a handwritten signature?

Two situations need to be separated here. For internal workflows (purchase requests, leave, expenses), giving approval in a system with authenticated identity, and having it recorded, is common practice; what matters is being able to establish reliably who gave the approval.

For documents that require a signature, the law of the country applies. In Türkiye, that is Electronic Signature Law No. 5070. Under Article 5, a secure electronic signature has the same legal effect as a handwritten signature. The same article states that transactions which laws subject to an official form or a special procedure cannot be carried out with a secure electronic signature. Clarify which of your documents fall into which category with your legal adviser.

What should you ask when choosing approval workflow software?

There are plenty of form and approval tools on the market; the differences show up when your business changes. When evaluating, look for answers to these questions:

• Can the person who knows the process change approval steps and form fields without waiting for a software team?
• Can multi-level approval, delegation and escalation be defined?
• Can an approved request be written to the ERP and other systems automatically?
• Can approvers decide on mobile, with the attachments in view?
• Can the duration of each step be reported?

Piküp's own product, Nexfabra, was designed as an answer to these questions. In Nexfabra, modules and forms are built with drag and drop; multi-level approval, delegation and escalation are defined without waiting for a technical team; and steps such as creating records, sending notifications and updates are modeled with business rules, without writing code. The process writes to your existing ERP automatically, and every step is tracked in built-in reports and dashboards. The purchasing chain (request, approval, order) and approval levels by amount and category are among the ready-made solutions on the platform. See workflow management in Nexfabra for details.

What should you measure once the workflow is live?

Building a digital form is half the job. If you cannot see how long a request waits at each step, you rebuild the paper bottleneck in digital form. The core measures to track are:

• Total time from request to final approval
• Average waiting time at each approval step
• The share of requests rejected or sent back for correction, and the reasons
• The number of requests that hit escalation

If the send-back rate is high, the problem is usually not the approver but the form: the information needed to decide is not being asked for up front.

In short: a checklist before you start

• Pick the most frequent request type; do not try to move every process at once.
• Set form fields based on the information the approver needs to decide.
• Define approvers by role, not by person; write delegation and escalation in from the start.
• Turn amount and category thresholds into rules based on your authority matrix.
• Make the step after approval (order, accounting, ERP record) part of the flow.
• Measure waiting time per step from the first month.

If you would like to talk through how to design your own approval processes, contact us.