Approvals (Coming Soon)
Coming Soon: Approvals is being finished or tested and is not available to turn on yet. This guide describes the expected workflow and may change before release.
Approvals will help your office route important sign-offs through the right people before work moves forward.
Accounts without the active Approvals workspace will see a coming-soon placeholder. The planned Approvals workflow includes creating approval requests, assigning ordered reviewer steps, recording approve/reject decisions, showing a reviewer inbox, and cancelling requests, but the active customer-facing Approvals workspace is not available yet.
When to use this
Plan to use Approvals when a quote, refund, expense, or other high-impact action should not move ahead until a manager or role owner signs off.
Good candidates include:
- high-dollar quotes that need owner review before sending
- refunds, credits, or write-offs that require manager approval
- technician reimbursement requests that need office review before payment
- change-sensitive workflows where every decision needs a short comment trail
What to prepare now
Before the Approvals workspace is generally available:
- List the workflows that need approval and who owns each decision.
- Decide which requests can use one reviewer and which need ordered multi-step review.
- Name the role or person responsible for each step, such as service manager, office manager, owner, or bookkeeper.
- Decide what information reviewers need in the request title, description, and supporting record.
- Set expectations for how quickly reviewers should approve, reject, or ask for changes.
Expected workflow
When the full workspace is available, an approval request should follow this pattern:
- A connected ToolbagCRM workflow creates a request with a title, description, related record, and approval point.
- ToolbagCRM assigns one or more reviewer steps in order.
- Each reviewer sees open items in their approval inbox.
- The assigned reviewer approves or rejects their step and can leave a comment.
- The request resolves once the required steps are complete. While it is still pending, the person who started it or an administrator can cancel it if the original work no longer needs approval; general Approvals access alone does not allow another teammate to cancel it.
Current availability
The active Approvals workspace does not yet expose an inbox, settings screen, or request builder in customer accounts. The current screen shows a coming-soon notice rather than a usable approval workflow.
If your team needs sign-off before this workspace is live, use your existing manual review process. For example, agree who can send high-value quotes or issue refunds, and record the manager's approval before acting.
Tips
- Start with one approval workflow before adding rules to every office process.
- Keep the first rule simple: one trigger, one request type, and one required reviewer.
- Use clear titles so reviewers can understand the request without opening several records.
- Avoid routing everything to the owner by default; assign the person closest to the decision.
- Review stale pending requests weekly so work does not get stuck in limbo.