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Overview

Approvals is where quotes go for internal sign-off before you respond to a partner. An approval flow defines the statuses a request moves through, who it goes to, and which fields the approver is allowed to see. The Approvals Management table then tracks every request you’ve sent. Approvers don’t need a Seminode account. They receive an email, verify their address with a one-time code, and act on their own page — see The approver’s experience.

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Approvals Management

The main table on the Approvals page lists every approval request your team has sent, one row per line item. Use it to see what’s outstanding, chase what’s stale, and reconcile the numbers approvers saw.

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Find the rows you need

  • Search — match on material number, partner, or manufacturer.
  • Approval Status and Partner — quick inline filters in the toolbar.
  • Filters — the full filter modal, with status, manufacturer, partner, recipient, date ranges, multi-column sorting, and range sliders for the financial columns (total value, margin, margin %, adjusted margin, adjusted margin %, markup, markup %, and the flow’s financial adjustment). A badge on the button shows how many filters are active.
  • Sort — click any sortable column header to cycle descending, ascending, then unsorted. A header click replaces any multi-column sort set in the filter modal.
  • Columns — show, hide, and drag-reorder columns. Alongside identity fields (material number, internal number, manufacturer, partner, recipient) the table carries the full financial spread: unit price, adjusted unit price, quantity, total value, margin, margin %, adjusted margin, adjusted margin %, markup, and markup %.
  • Export — download the current view.

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Act on rows

Select one or more rows and a selection bar appears with Send Reminder — a bulk resend that queues a reminder email for every selected request, with an optional subject and message override applied to all of them. The row menu offers:
  • Resend Email — resend a single request, optionally overriding the subject and message. Requests still in a Ready for Approval status haven’t been sent yet, so they have nothing to resend.
  • Edit Adjustment — re-price the line for the approver. See Re-pricing after routing.
  • Delete — remove the request.
Every send is recorded. Open Send History on a request to see each initial send, resend, and bulk reminder with its timestamp — useful when an approver claims they never received anything.

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Approval flows

Click Create Flow to build one. The modal has two steps: Configuration and Variables.

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Step 1 — Configuration

1

Name the flow

Enter an Action Name (required) and an optional Description — for example, Finance sign-off or Program manager review.
2

Build the status pipeline

Add Statuses from your team’s status catalog, or type a new name and pick its kind. Every status is one of four kinds: Ready for Approval, Pending, Approved, or Rejected.Ordering is automatic — Ready for Approval, then Pending, then Approved, then Rejected — so you never wire up transitions by hand. Dragging a row reorders it only within its own kind. A flow needs at least one Pending status and at least one terminal status (Approved or Rejected), and can have at most one Ready for Approval.
3

Open Advanced Settings

Everything optional lives in the collapsed Advanced Settings section — see below.
A status ends the flow because of its kind, not because you mark it terminal. Anything of the Approved or Rejected kind is an end state.

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Advanced Settings

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Step 2 — Variables

The Variables step decides which columns an approver sees. Pick fields from the variable picker, then drag them into the order they should appear. A live preview shows each field with an example value. This is your disclosure control. Anything you don’t add is never shown to the approver.
If the flow carries a financial adjustment, be deliberate about which fields you expose. Showing the adjusted price alongside certain spread fields — margin, markup, or the adjustment itself — can let an approver work backwards to the partner’s original quoted price. Expose only what the approver needs to make the call.

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Managing existing flows

Click View Flows for a modal with two tabs:
  • Flows — every flow as a card. Expand one to see its pipeline rendered as numbered steps, plus creation and update details. The card’s menu offers Edit and Delete.
  • Statuses — your team’s shared status catalog.
Flows are edited, not versioned: you can add and reorder statuses on a live flow. If you remove a status that still has quotes sitting in it, the editor asks you to pick another status of the same kind to move them to, so nothing is stranded mid-flight. To pause a flow rather than delete it, switch Enabled off in Advanced Settings.

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Adjusting what approvers see

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Financial adjustment

A flow-level financial adjustment restates prices and margins for approvers without touching what the partner quoted. Set it as a percentage (10 = +10%, -5 = −5%) or as a flat amount (-150 for a $150 discount). The adjusted columns in the Approvals Management table always show the post-adjustment figures next to the originals.

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Re-pricing after routing

A quote can be re-priced after it’s already been sent for approval. Choose Edit Adjustment on the row:
  • Percent scales the quoted unit price.
  • Amount replaces the quoted unit price outright.
  • Leaving the field blank clears the adjustment.
The modal previews the resulting adjusted price and total value before you save, and takes an optional note recording why. A saved adjustment — or a resend carrying a new one — replaces the line’s current adjusted price. The partner’s quoted price is never changed.

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Bulk approvals

You can route many lines at once rather than one at a time:
  • Send in bulk — select multiple threads in the Inbox and send them for approval in a single step, reviewing each item’s recipients, subject, and message before it goes, and dropping any item you don’t want to include.
  • Complete in bulk — an approver who receives a multi-item request works from a single page showing every line with a running “3 of 12 reviewed” count.
  • Remind in bulk — select rows in the Approvals Management table and use Send Reminder.
Every one of these is captured in the request’s send history, so a bulk action is as auditable as a single one.

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The approver’s experience

Approvers are usually people outside your Seminode team — finance, a program owner, a site lead. The flow is built so they never need an account.
1

They get an email

The approval request arrives by email with an Open button.
2

They verify with a code

Opening the request asks for their email address, then a six-digit one-time passcode sent to that same address. No password, no account setup. Sessions expire, and they simply re-verify.
3

They work from My Approvals

My Approvals lists every request sent to their address, grouped by the team that sent it, split into Pending and Completed tabs with counts. They can export the list.
4

They decide

Opening an item shows the quote details — limited to the variables the flow exposes — and a response form: a New status dropdown, a Rejection Reason that becomes required when the chosen status is a rejection kind, and an optional Comment. A confirmation dialog summarizes the choice before it’s submitted.
Where a flow requires several people to sign off, each approver sees the sign-off checklist but can only tick their own row, and the Approved transition stays blocked until every sign-off is recorded.
Visibility is scoped to the email address the request was sent to. Forwarding the email does not transfer the ability to act — the recipient of a forward would have to verify their own address, and would see only their own approvals. If someone else needs to decide, send the request to them.
There is deliberately no counter or message action for approvers. They approve, reject, or leave a comment. Negotiation goes back through your team — which keeps a single voice on the partner-facing thread.

Inbox

Send quotes for approval and see approval state on threads.

Inbox Automations

Filter rules on approval status to pre-sort what’s waiting.