What is Approval Workflow?
Turkish: Onay İş Akışı
An approval workflow routes decisions such as quotes, purchases, or leave requests to the right people based on authority rules.
What is an Approval Workflow?
An approval workflow moves a document, request, or decision through the organization according to predefined authority rules. A purchase request, expense form, leave request, or sales quote may start from the same portal, but each can require different approval limits and roles.
How Does It Work?
The flow usually begins when a user creates a request. The system looks at fields such as amount, department, customer type, or document category to select the first approver. Approve, reject, return, delegate, timeout, and escalation states are defined in advance. Important steps trigger notifications, and every decision is recorded with a timestamp.
Simple workflows may have one approval level; enterprise processes often need multi-level, conditional, or parallel approvals.
Business Use
Approval workflows bring visibility to purchasing, finance, HR, contract management, and partner operations. Teams can see who is blocking a request, why a request was rejected, and which authority rule supported a decision. A workflow engine automates execution, while BPM focuses on analyzing and improving the broader process.
Poorly designed approval flows create bottlenecks instead of control, so authority matrices, delegation rules, and exception cases should be clarified early.