Welcome to article three of four in our order and quote exception approval series, brought to you by Nue! We’ve tapped into decades of experience to bring you approval best practices we see across sales-led B2B organizations.
These articles are more like modules than chapters—jump in wherever you need, or read the full series to unlock your inner RevOps architect.
Here’s a quick guide to the series:
No one builds a tech stack with the intent of making future administrators miserable. There’s always a reason to do things a certain way at the time and, before you know it, that “temporary patch” becomes a permanent solution.
Anything automated has a way of becoming technical debt if it’s not revisited often, and approval rules and processes are no exception.
It’s time to stop ignoring the red flags and undo some of the inadvertent damage of approval workflows that are no longer “good enough.”
Salespeople know that you need to be a squeaky wheel to get anywhere in this world. So chances are they’ve been complaining about approvals For. Ev. Er. The problem is that when there’s truly a problem, it’s easy to roll your eyes and ignore it.
Here are some sure signs there’s a real problem:
Quick rules to live by:
Like we mentioned earlier, people don’t maliciously design bad processes. But complaints, slowdowns, ignoring or fast-tracking approvals, and doing extra manual work are all signs that your process design is… well.. bad.
We’d like to say it doesn’t matter how someone messed up, but auditing the original setup and ensuring it matches documentation is essential to fixing the problem.
If documentation doesn’t exist, create visual workflows for each exception before you try to combine the rules. Then compare your logic to what is actually implemented in your system. Check for extra steps, bridges to no where (a rule that just randomly stops without doing anything), and rules that contradict your current go-to-market strategy.
The most common problems we see stem from:
Overengineering: Or not knowing when to say “No” to an overenthusiastic executive.
Unclear logic: If you can’t put it in a visual workflow, you can’t automate it.
Poor documentation: What your team thinks should be happening isn’t what’s actually happening in the system because your documentation is three versions behind.
Lack of visibility: If your sales manager or CFO doesn’t know the rules, how are they supposed to enforce them?
Once you diagnose the problem and fix it, remember to clean up that documentation so someone on your sales team can read it.
Let’s use a simple discounting matrix for this example:
We’ve been hearing complaints from the sales team that the CFO is too slow to review their deals. They’re very happy with their managers. Minus Mary, who’s always on sales calls with her sellers. The VP of Sales is better than the CFO, but the VP always calls the salesperson for more details before they approve the deal, which can also add a delay.
Fortunately for us, the original rules match the documentation, so the real focus will be figuring out why approval timelines are so inconsistent.
Run a report that reviews at least two quarters worth of data to see whether the change is recent. For the purposes of this example, we’ll keep it simple and just look at one quarter’s worth of data to verify there truly is a problem.
When we look at last quarter’s approval timeline report, we see:
Sales didn’t complain about Edward’s lightning-fast approvals—but let’s be real: five minutes isn’t long enough to thoughtfully evaluate anything.
A note about reports for problem solving: In a real organization, we recommend layering on deal size in addition to exception, approver, and timeline. Chances are high that smaller ticket items require less thought than larger ticket items (or visa versa). We also recommend separating new deals from expansions and renewals.
Meet with the managers to figure out why you’re seeing such variability in the time to approval. Ask a combination of open-ended and direct questions to figure out what’s happening.
We run through the meetings and find the following:
Like any riddle revenue operations faces, there are multiple problems to solve.
The answers to the above questions will require amending logic, testing the changed workflow rules, and updating documentation. But they’re all solvable.
Streamlining doesn't mean sacrificing control. Smart logic > fewer rules for the sake of speed.
Ask yourself:
Using our example above, we would evaluate whether a discount of under 20% is given to an SMB account. In those cases only, we would not require an approval.
Auto-approvals are a way to track exceptions that were previously routed but no longer require manager approval. However, this could also be accomplished via reports, so we’ll stick with conditional logic!
Approval workflows aren’t doomed to spiral into chaos—but they will if no one owns the cleanup.
Every “temporary” workaround, overzealous rule, or visibility gap eventually turns into real friction.
The good news?
These problems are fixable with the right approach: smart diagnostics, cross-functional input, and an ongoing commitment to iterate.
RevOps isn’t just here to unblock deals. You're here to build scalable, flexible systems that support smart growth. That means asking tough questions, tracking patterns, simplifying where possible, and ruthlessly trimming anything that doesn’t serve your GTM motion anymore.
So take a deep breath, audit your logic, and remember: approvals are supposed to protect the business—not slow it down.
Need a system that adapts as fast as your business? Streamline and automate complex approvals without custom coding with Nue’s Approval Pro. Learn more by clicking here.
