Here's how most approval processes work in practice.

Someone needs a purchase approved. They send an email. The approver is in meetings all day and doesn't see it. The person follows up the next morning. The approver replies asking for a number they don't have. The person gets the number, sends it back. The approver forwards it to their manager for a second sign-off. Nobody knows where it stands. The thing either gets approved four days later or falls into an inbox and never comes back up.

Six emails. One approval. Four days.

This isn't a people problem. It's a process problem — and it's one of the most common things that workflow automation actually fixes well.

Why Email Is the Wrong Tool for Approvals

Email was built for communication. It was not built for tracking, routing, escalating, or auditing decisions.

When your approval process lives in email, a few things are always true:

There's no visibility. The person waiting for approval has no idea where their request stands unless they ask. The approver has no structured reminder if they forget. No one has a clear record of what was approved, when, and by whom.

There's no consistency. Some requests get approved in an hour. Others sit for a week. The difference usually has nothing to do with urgency — it's just whoever happened to check their inbox.

There's no audit trail. When something goes wrong six months later and someone asks who approved what, the answer is a search through an email thread that may or may not exist anymore.

The fix isn't to tell people to check their email faster. The fix is to stop running approvals through email entirely.

What an Automated Approval Flow Actually Does

An automated approval workflow — built in Power Automate, for example — handles the entire process without anyone having to remember to do anything.

When someone submits a request (through a form, an app, or a trigger in another system), the workflow immediately routes it to the right approver. Not to their general inbox — to an approval request, with the relevant information already attached, with a single button to approve or reject, and a field to leave a note if needed.

If the approver doesn't respond within a set window, the workflow sends a reminder automatically. If it still doesn't get a response, it can escalate to a backup approver or flag it for follow-up.

When a decision is made, the requester is notified instantly. The decision — who approved it, when, and any notes — is logged automatically. No one has to send a follow-up email to find out what happened.

If the request requires a second sign-off, the workflow routes it to the next approver in sequence without anyone having to manually forward anything.

The whole thing runs in the background. The people involved just see a clear request, click a button, and move on.

What This Looks Like for Common Approval Types

Approval automation isn't limited to purchase requests. The same pattern applies to almost any process where someone needs a decision before work can move forward.

Purchase and expense approvals — Request submitted, routed to manager, escalated to finance if over a threshold, logged in your records automatically.

Time-off requests — Submitted by employee, routed to manager, checked against a team calendar, confirmation sent to both parties.

Contract or document sign-offs — Document submitted for review, routed to legal or leadership, e-signature collected, final version stored automatically.

New vendor or supplier approvals — Vendor information submitted, routed through procurement and finance, decision logged with supporting documentation.

Project or change requests — Scope change submitted, routed to project lead and stakeholders, decision tracked against the project record.

The common thread: someone needs a yes or no before something can happen. Automating that doesn't change the decision — it just makes sure the decision actually gets made, on time, with a record of it.

What You Need to Get Started

The good news: if your organization is on Microsoft 365, you already have access to Power Automate. It's included in most Business and Enterprise plans. The capability is already paid for.

What you actually need to set it up well is clarity on a few things before you start building:

Who can request what. Not every approval flow is the same. A $50 supply order and a $50,000 contract should route differently.

Who approves it. Is it one person, or does it require multiple sign-offs? Is there a backup if the primary approver is out?

What information the approver needs. If the approver has to go hunting for context before they can make a decision, the process is already slow.

What happens after the decision. Does it trigger a purchase order? Update a record? Notify a third party? The approval is rarely the last step.

Map those out clearly, and the actual build is straightforward. Skip them, and you'll build something that technically works but doesn't solve the real problem.

The Part Most People Don't Expect

The biggest benefit of automating approvals usually isn't the time saved on the approval itself. It's what happens downstream.

When approvals are faster and more consistent, projects move faster. Vendors get paid on time. Employees stop feeling like their requests disappear into a void. Managers spend less time fielding "did you see my email?" messages. And when something needs to be audited, the record is already there.

A process that took six emails and four days can realistically happen in under an hour — without anyone having to chase anything.

If your team has an approval process that runs through email right now, that's the place to start. It's one of the highest-impact automations you can build, and it's usually one of the fastest to set up.

If you want to understand what that would look like for your specific process, a discovery call is the place to start — no commitment, just a clear picture of what's possible. And if you're still figuring out whether your workflows are ready for automation in general, our post on how to know if your workflow needs automation covers the signs to look for.