Client intake and approval workflows
Keep approvals moving with fewer manual follow-ups.
One workflow runs live from end to end: the approval rules, the awkward cases, a history of who approved what, and an alert when something fails. It is tested on real cases and handed to a named owner who can change it.
- What you get
- One working workflow with approvals, failure handling and run records, plus instructions an owner can use to maintain it.
- How it starts
- A free scope call. The price is fixed in writing before anyone is given access.
- When it is done
- Agreed business cases and exception paths are tested, users accept the workflow, and its owner can operate and change it.
Illustrative sample · constructed example
Approval is only the beginning. Handle the failed action too.
Constructed run · employee onboarding
Selected check
What happens when the mailbox action fails after the account action succeeds?
Exception route Correct the failure → retry that action → reconcile the expected results.
| Step | Control or responsibility | Sample run |
|---|---|---|
| Request and approval | Validate required fields and record the responsible approver. | Approved sample request |
| Account action | Retain the action result so it is not repeated on retry. | Completed action retained |
| Mailbox action | Report failure to the agreed owner; retry the failed step. | Mailbox action failed |
| Reconciliation | Check expected outcomes before closing the request. | Request stays open |
Constructed run. No accounts are created and no systems are connected by this illustration.
- Evidence
- Constructed run: account result retained; mailbox action fails and the owner is alerted.
- Decision
- Keep the request open
- Next action
- Correct the failure and retry the failed action without repeating the completed account action.
Illustrative workflow. No accounts are created. Run the interactive sandbox on the automation page to inspect approval, rejection and failure paths.
Interactive sandbox / Employee lifecycle
One request.
A workspace ready for what’s next.
Set up a new colleague or close access when someone leaves. Approve the plan, run it and inspect what changed.
Local demonstration · fictional records, fixed rules and no live connections. Switching examples or reloading resets the workspace.
- Request
- Review & approve
- Apply & check
- Handover
02 / Change plan
A request becomes specific actions.
Start with the sample request.
The plan will name each system, the change and the result to check.
03 / Sample workspace
See the records change.
User directory
No sessions
Groups & workspace
No access
Email service
Sample record · no live connection
IT work queue
Physical device work is handled by IT
Why now
The work starts here.
One process still runs on emailed spreadsheets, chased approvals, and the same data typed into two systems.
Scope at a glance
- One workflow, end to end
- Premium connector licensing is yours
- Handed to a named owner
If nobody acts
What waiting costs
With no queue anyone can see, questions get answered by asking. How many items are in the process, and how long has this one been sitting, both go to whoever touched it last.
Finding out who approved a particular item means searching individual mailboxes. An approval given in a corridor or on a call leaves nothing to search at all.
Figures typed into two systems by hand stay in step only while somebody remembers to correct both. After that the two records disagree until a person compares them line by line.
A step that fails or gets forgotten raises no alert. The first person to notice the process has stopped is usually the client, or the employee waiting on the outcome.
Each awkward case handled off to the side stays an unwritten rule, applied from memory. Handing the process to somebody else means sitting beside them until enough of those cases have come up.
Check your own environment
Sounds like you?
- A spreadsheet gets emailed round for approval and the newest reply wins
- One person knows the order of the steps, and everything waits when they are away
- The same information is typed into two systems by hand
- Answering "who approved this, and when?" means searching mailboxes
Save yourself the call
Not for you if
- The process is about to change, so anything built now gets rebuilt
- Nobody inside the business will own the workflow after handover
- A tool you already pay for does this and the team was never shown how
The work
What is different when we hand over
Where more than one routine is in the running, each candidate is written up with the hours it costs today, and the one built first is chosen from that rather than from who asked loudest.
The process is mapped as it really runs, including the exceptions people handle by hand and never mention.
One workflow is built in production: the approval rules, the routing, and the data written back to the systems of record.
Exception paths are built too (the rejection, the escalation, the missing-field case), because a workflow that only handles the happy path pushes the hard cases back to email.
Audit history is turned on so the process can answer who approved what, and when.
Failure alerting is configured and pointed at a real destination, so a broken run is noticed by a person rather than by the client waiting on it.
The process is tested with real cases from the business, and handed to a named owner who has been walked through maintaining it.
Acceptance
Checks before handover
The workflow runs in production against real cases
Every agreed exception path has been triggered in testing and behaves as designed
Audit history records who approved what and when
Failure alerts fire to an agreed destination and have been tested by forcing a failure
User acceptance testing is signed off by the business owner of the process
A named owner has been walked through maintaining and changing it
A fair question
We tried building something like this before and it broke. Why would this be different?
Most of those break for the same reason: they handle the normal path and push everything unusual back into email, so people stop trusting them. The rejections, escalations and missing-field cases are built here as part of the job, the failures raise an alert instead of going quiet, and it is handed to a named person who can change it without calling anyone.
Price and calendar
Scope, price and project calendar
Engagement price
Price fixed after a short scope call.
The price is agreed in writing before any work starts and before anyone is given access. The call itself costs nothing. What moves the number:
What determines the scope
- Whether the process is already chosen, or the candidates have to be costed first
- Whether the process needs reporting on top of it: a dashboard of what it is doing, built and handed over
- Number of approval steps and decision branches
- Number of exception paths that must be handled in the flow
- Which systems are connected, and whether they need premium connectors or a custom API
- Whether historical data has to be migrated into the new process
- Whether the client team is trained to build the next one themselves
Delivery calendar
The proposal names the start date, the change windows and the completion date before anything is agreed.
How engagements workScope & responsibilities
What is and is not included
The exclusions, what we need from you, how change is staged and reversed, and what is handed over at the end.
Exclusions
- Licensing for the workflow platform or its premium connectors
- A second workflow: each is scoped and priced on its own
- Custom application development outside the agreed workflow platform and the system APIs it connects to
- Ongoing workflow administration after handover
- Business-process redesign, new approval authority or operating-policy changes. Comparing candidates and mapping the agreed process does not include redesigning it
What we need from you
- Name the business owner of the process, who signs off acceptance
- Provide the real cases used for testing
- Provide or license any premium connectors the design requires
- Confirm the approval rules, including who can approve what and to what value
- Own end-user communications and training
Change and rollback method
- The workflow is built and tested away from your live system first, then moved across. It never goes live by being edited in place while people depend on it.
- Go-live runs in parallel with the manual process for an agreed period, so the first real failure has a fallback that already works.
What you keep at handover
- A System guide: the configuration as delivered, the checks that were run and the unresolved list
- Where the process was still being chosen, the costed list of candidates and why the built one won
- The process map, as it really runs, including the exceptions
- The workflow itself, documented so the team can change it
- The test record, including every exception path triggered
- The alerting configuration and its tested destination
- The signed acceptance and the named owner
Access, acceptance and support arrangements
How you know the work is good
Judge it by what you can inspect.
The method is written down, the sample records open and the demo can be broken on purpose. Read it the way your technical owner would.
- 01How a project runs
A first conversation, free. An agreed scope with a named technical lead in the proposal. The price fixed in writing before we are given access. Checks before handover.
How we work- 02What is checked
Release checks, access test matrices and ownership maps. Constructed inspection records on the service pages show the standard before you buy.
See sample deliverables- 03What you keep
A System guide: what was agreed, what changed, what was tested and what remains open. With it, the scripts and check results behind the work.
Next step
Start with a free scope call.
Tell us what needs to change, what must keep working and the deadline. The call is free, and the price is fixed in writing before anyone is given access.
Fix this workflowOr write to [email protected]