Automating approval workflows: Where approvals get stuck in mid-market companies

An offer sits ready in the inbox of the managing director, who is currently on the construction site. An invoice waits for approval from the authorized signatory, who is on vacation. A purchase request disappears among fifty other emails on CC. In many mid-market companies, approvals are not a process but a matter of luck: whoever reads the right email first and still remembers it decides how quickly things move forward.

This article shows where approvals really get stuck in practice, what it costs, and how to automate approval workflows without losing control over the decision.

Why do approvals get stuck in email inboxes in the first place?

Email is so error-prone as an approval tool because it has neither a fixed sequence nor a deadline nor automatic substitution: Every message looks equally urgent until someone happens to ask where a request is stuck.

Add to that the classic ping-pong on CC: Three people are informed, but no one feels responsible as the first. If someone asks whether an approval has already been given, they often just get an out-of-office notice back, and the actual request just sits there until someone personally reminds them.

After a widely cited McKinsey study, knowledge workers spend on average 28 percent of their work week managing emails and almost 20 percent searching for internal information or the right contact person. Exactly this search—who needs to approve right now and where a request currently sits—is the real time killer in approvals, not the substantive decision itself.

What does a slow approval process really cost a company?

According to a Civey survey commissioned by Allgeier inovar, every third employee with administrative tasks loses roughly 28 working days per year due to inefficient processes, because 36 percent of the 1,000 surveyed lose more than one hour of work time daily to such friction losses.

Particularly notable for approvals: 39 percent of respondents observe noticeably delayed decisions as a result, and only 20 percent of companies have consistently digitized document processes such as invoice, contract, or approval processes. The rest remains wholly or partially stuck in email inboxes or on paper, with noticeable consequences for speed and sanity in daily operations.

Where exactly does the process get stuck when an approval gets stuck?

In practice, it is almost always the same three gaps that slow down an approval workflow: a missing automatic substitution rule in case of absence, unclear order in multi-level approvals, and no traceability of who made which decision when.

• Missing escalation: If the responsible person is on vacation or sick, the request just sits there until someone manually follows up.
• Unclear order: For larger orders, two departments often need to approve, such as accounting and management, without it being clear who goes first, so in the end both or neither feels responsible.
• Missing traceability: During an invoice audit or auditor meeting, it is often impossible to reconstruct who approved a payment and when, which becomes a real compliance risk in audit-relevant processes.

Especially with automating invoice receipt, this combination of multiple responsibilities and missing traceability comes up particularly often, because here multiple departments must anyway decide both substantively and formally.

What does an automated approval workflow look like in practice?

At a construction trade customer with around 40 employees, offers and orders over 500 euros previously ran exclusively through the personal approval of management via email attachment, often with delays of several days when the boss was on the construction site or traveling.

We connected the process with Power Automate to the existing order system. As soon as an offer or order exceeds a set amount, an approval request automatically goes via the approval function in Microsoft Teams to management, with all relevant information directly in the message instead of as an email attachment. If no one responds within a set time window, the workflow automatically forwards the request to a backup person, and every decision lands with a timestamp and name in a reportable list.

The result: Approvals that previously sat in the inbox for days are now typically decided within a few hours, because every stage has a deadline and a backup person, and no one needs to write a follow-up email anymore to find out where a request is stuck.

This process is rarely a one-off: Usually approval is just one stop within the entire order processing, which can be automated as a whole.

What does an approval workflow need so it doesn't disappear in the inbox again?

An approval workflow is truly robust only when it automatically provides three things: deadline logic with escalation, a complete history of every decision, and connection to the system where work happens anyway, instead of becoming another standalone application that no one willingly opens.

Which tool fits for that—Power Automate, n8n, or another solution—depends on your existing IT landscape, not on trends. At NordFlux, we therefore classify approval workflows as process automation, because approval rarely stands alone but is usually part of a larger process, such as invoice receipt, purchasing, or onboarding.

If you are unsure where things get stuck the most in your own operation, it is best to start with the process that people have cursed most recently; this is, in our experience, a more reliable indicator than any prioritization table.

Frequently asked questions

Which approvals can be automated most easily?

Invoice approvals, purchase approvals above a set threshold, vacation requests, and quote approvals can be automated most quickly because they have clear rules and few exceptions.

Do we need new software for that?

In most cases, no. Approval workflows can be connected directly with Power Automate or n8n to Outlook, Teams, SharePoint, or the existing ERP system without introducing an additional application.

How long does it take to implement an automated approval process?

A single approval process, such as for orders or invoices, can typically be piloted within a few weeks, including escalation rules and testing with real cases from daily operations.

What happens if the responsible person is sick or on vacation?

That is exactly what the escalation rule is for: If the first level does not respond within the set deadline, the request automatically goes to a backup person without anyone having to manually follow up.

Is an automated approval workflow also an advantage from a compliance perspective?

Yes, because every decision is documented with timestamp and person, which has significantly more evidential power in invoice audits or internal audits than an email chain that eventually ends up in the trash.