Approval workflows become difficult when requests move between email, chat, forms, spreadsheets, CRM records and project tools. The problem is rarely just that a decision takes too long. It is that nobody can reliably see what is waiting, who owns the next step, what information is missing or where the final decision has been recorded.
Make can help founders connect those steps and automate the actions that follow an approval or rejection. It is particularly useful when a request must be routed according to rules and then update several systems. But Make is a workflow engine, not an approval strategy. It cannot decide who should approve, what counts as complete or how exceptions should be handled unless those decisions are designed first.
The right starting point is therefore not a Make scenario. It is a clear operating model for the approval. Define the business state, owner, decision rule, source of truth and escalation path first. Then use Make to reduce manual work and keep the rest of the business stack aligned.
Why approval visibility matters more than automation alone
Founders often look at automation when approvals begin to slow down. A discount waits for a decision, a purchase request sits in a manager’s inbox, or a customer exception is discussed in a chat thread without being recorded anywhere useful.
These examples have a common failure pattern: the business cannot answer basic operational questions quickly.
- What is the current status?
- Who owns the next action?
- How long has the request been waiting?
- What information is blocking a decision?
- What happened after approval or rejection?
Make can move information between systems, send notifications and apply routing logic. It does not automatically create visibility. Visibility exists only when the workflow maintains a trusted record of status, ownership, age, decision history and next step.
An approval is not operationally complete when someone says yes. It is complete when the decision, owner and resulting business action are recorded where the team can use them.
What Make is good at in an approval process
Make is a strong fit when an approval spans several applications or contains rules that are difficult to manage manually. A request might begin in a form, be enriched with CRM information, route to an approver, notify the requester and create downstream work after a decision.
Typical uses include:
- Routing discounts or quotes according to value, margin or customer type
- Sending purchase requests to the right budget owner
- Updating CRM and project records after a decision
- Creating tasks for fulfilment, finance or delivery teams
- Recording approval history in a central tracker
- Escalating requests that have passed an agreed response time
Its value is orchestration. Make can help one business decision produce consistent actions across the systems involved in that process. Founders evaluating the technical layer can review Make automation services, but the platform should be selected after the process requirements are understood.
What Make should not be expected to solve
Make should not be used to hide an undefined approval policy. It cannot compensate for missing decision criteria, conflicting ownership or a team that has not agreed where work should be tracked.
A scenario can send a reminder to five people, but that does not establish who is accountable. It can update a status field, but that does not make the status meaningful. It can branch based on a value, but the business still needs to decide whether that value represents a real approval rule.
The more systems a workflow touches, the more important the process definition becomes. Technical flexibility increases the number of possible designs, including fragile ones.
The operating model to define before building
Before creating a Make scenario, describe the approval as a sequence of business states. A request should move from one meaningful state to another, rather than simply triggering a collection of activities.
This model creates a useful distinction between an activity and a business state. Sending an email is an activity. Waiting for a finance decision is a state. Reporting should focus on the states that require management attention.
A workflow stage should represent a meaningful business state, not merely the fact that an automation ran.
Ownership, routing and exception rules
Approval workflows need explicit ownership at every point where work can stop. A shared inbox or group chat may be a communication channel, but it is not necessarily an owner.
Define the following before implementation:
- Who owns the request before it is submitted
- Who checks that the request is complete
- Which rule determines the approver
- Who takes over if the normal approver is unavailable
- When an escalation is triggered
- Who records the reason for rejection or return
- Who confirms that the approved action was completed
Routing rules should be understandable by someone who did not build the scenario. For example, a discount might go to a sales manager below one threshold and to a commercial lead above it. If the rule depends on an undocumented exception, the workflow is already difficult to maintain.
Exception handling deserves equal attention. Consider missing data, duplicate submissions, changed values after submission, rejected requests that are resubmitted, and approvers who do not respond. A workflow that handles only the happy path will create manual work around the edges.
Choose the system of record before connecting tools
Make can distribute updates, but one system should remain authoritative for the approval’s current status. This might be a CRM, an operations database or a project management workspace, depending on where the business manages the related work.
Notifications should point people toward that record rather than becoming the record themselves. Email and chat are useful for attention, but they are poor long-term sources of truth because messages are difficult to report on, easy to miss and disconnected from the underlying business data.
A useful approval record normally includes:
- Request type and unique reference
- Requester and accountable owner
- Current state
- Assigned approver
- Submission date and decision date
- Relevant amount, risk or threshold data
- Decision reason or supporting notes
- Next action and completion status
If ClickUp is the appropriate operational layer, its workspace structure, dashboards and integrations should be designed around these states rather than added after the automation is complete. The ClickUp consulting service is one example of the kind of systems work involved in making that layer usable for reporting and handoffs.
When Make is the right choice, and when it is not
Use Make when orchestration is the problem
Make is a good fit when several tools must stay aligned, routing requires conditional logic, and an approved request needs to create or update downstream work automatically.
Look elsewhere when simplicity is the answer
A native workflow may be better when the approval is simple, contained in one platform and easy for the platform owner to report on and maintain.
More flexibility does not automatically create a better operating system. A simple native approval can be easier to understand, govern and troubleshoot than a multi-tool scenario.
Make is also not a substitute for governance where the process requires controls that the chosen tools and internal operating model cannot support. The decision should consider business risk, data sensitivity, volume, audit needs, ownership and maintenance capacity, not just whether a scenario can be built.
Two hypothetical approval scenarios
A discount approval for a growing sales team
Imagine a sales team submitting discount requests through a form. The request includes customer, deal value, margin and requested discount. Make can check whether required fields are present, identify the approver from the thresholds, update the CRM, notify the owner and create a follow-up task after approval.
The important design decision is not the notification. It is where the current state lives and what happens when the margin changes after submission. If that exception is undefined, the team may approve information that is no longer current.
A purchase request across departments
Imagine employees submitting purchase requests that require department and budget-owner approval. A useful design would show every request, its owner, amount, current approver, age and outcome in one operational view. Make could route the request and update finance or procurement records, while the system of record preserves the decision history.
Without that view, automated reminders may increase activity without giving the founder a reliable picture of outstanding commitments.
How to evaluate the real cost
The subscription is only one part of the cost of an approval workflow. Founders should account for process design, data mapping, scenario architecture, testing, monitoring, documentation and ongoing ownership.
There is also the cost of failure. Poorly designed approvals can cause delayed revenue, incorrect purchasing, rework, missed handoffs and unreliable reporting. These costs are often harder to see because they appear as scattered manual effort rather than one invoice.
- Define the business states and completion criteria.
- Name one accountable owner for each state.
- Set required fields and decision thresholds.
- Choose the system of record.
- Document non-response, rejection and resubmission paths.
- Decide what leaders need to see in a report.
- Assign responsibility for monitoring and maintenance.
Useful measures might include approval age, time spent in each state, percentage returned for missing information, manual follow-up volume and the number of requests without a current owner. The right measures depend on the decision the business needs to improve.
A practical sequence for using Make responsibly
A process-first implementation can follow a straightforward sequence:
- Map the current process. Document how requests enter, who reviews them, where decisions happen and what work follows.
- Remove unnecessary steps. Do not automate a handoff that should be eliminated or simplified.
- Define the target states. Give each state an owner, entry condition, exit condition and escalation rule.
- Select the system of record. Make the reporting location clear before designing notifications.
- Build the smallest reliable scenario. Start with the main path, then add important exceptions deliberately.
- Test business outcomes. Test missing data, changed values, duplicate requests, rejection and non-response, not just successful execution.
- Monitor and review. Assign someone to inspect failures, stale requests and changes in the underlying process.
AI may later assist with a defined task such as classifying a request or checking whether information is present. It should not be added simply because the workflow uses automation. A defined job, clear boundary and human ownership are still required.
ConsultEvo’s process-first view is simple: use Make where it improves handoffs, data consistency and visibility. Do not use it to avoid making decisions about ownership, policy or reporting.
Frequently asked questions
Is Make suitable for approval workflows?
Make is suitable when an approval needs conditional routing or updates across multiple systems. It is less useful when a simple native approval already provides clear ownership, status and reporting.
What should be defined before building a Make approval workflow?
Define the business states, required information, approvers, routing rules, escalation path, exception handling and system of record before creating the automation.
How can Make improve approval visibility?
Make can keep a chosen CRM, project workspace or operations tracker updated with status, owner, age, decision history and next action. Notifications alone do not create reliable visibility.
What are the main risks of using Make for approvals?
The main risks are unclear ownership, undocumented exceptions, weak monitoring, excessive dependence on chat or email and a scenario that updates several systems without one authoritative status record.
Should every approval process use Make instead of a native tool?
No. A native tool is often preferable for a simple process contained within one platform. Make is most valuable when the workflow must coordinate multiple systems or apply more complex routing logic.
Design an approval workflow people can actually see and trust
If approval requests are slow, scattered or difficult to report on, ConsultEvo can help map the process, define ownership and implement the right automation layer.