Setting Up Approvals in New Approvals System on SpotDraft (Beta)

As a SpotDraft administrator, you can use approvals to control the flow of contract processes, ensuring necessary steps are taken and the correct individuals are notified. This guide explains how to set up approvals and use the new "Pause Approval Collection" feature within SpotDraft.

Why use approvals?

Approvals ensure that important contracts are reviewed and validated by the appropriate individuals or teams before proceeding to the next stage of the contract lifecycle. This helps streamline processes, reduce errors, and maintain compliance.

Setting Up Approvals

  1. Navigate to the Workflow Manager:
    • Go to the "Manage" section on the side navigation panel.
    • Click on "Workflow Manager."

  1. Select a Workflow:
    • Click on the workflow for which you want to set up approvals.
    • This will open the workflow details page.
  1. Go to Approvals Settings:
    • On the workflow details page, you'll see a section on the left-hand side labeled "Additional Options."
    • Click the "Approvals" button.

  1. Add a New Approval:
    • Click the "Add Approval" button to create a new approval step.

  1. Configure the Approval:
    • Approval Name: Give the approval a descriptive name (e.g., "Finance Approval," "Legal Approval").
    • Approver: Select the individual or team responsible for approving contracts within this workflow.
    • Instructions: Write clear instructions for the approver, explaining what they need to review and what actions they should take (e.g., "Please review all commercial details and payment terms before approving").

  1. Choose When the Approval is Required:
    • You have three options for when to collect this approval:
      • Always: This will ensure that approval is requested for all contracts created through this workflow.
      • Template Contract Undergoes Redlining: (NEW FEATURE) The approval will be triggered when the contract template is edited or a new version is uploaded. For example - legal approvals are only required when the contract is redlined and the template is no longer retained.
        • Note: this option is only available for template workflows
      • Conditions Based on Contract Variables: This allows you to request approval only if the specific conditions configured based on data fields in the contract are TRUE (e.g., "If the department is 'Finance' and the expense amount is greater than 10,000 euros").

  1. Define When the Approval Should Be Reset: (NEW FEATURE)
    • Select when this approval should reset from 'approved', ’skipped’, or 'rejected' state to 'pending' and require re-approval.
      • New version of the contract is uploaded: The approval will automatically reset if a new version of the contract is uploaded to SpotDraft, requiring re-approval on the latest version. This is useful when changes are made to the contract offline and uploaded to the system.
      • New version of the contract is published via the editor: The approval will reset if a new version of the contract is published by the editor, ensuring the latest edits are approved.
      • Values of variables set up in the above conditions are updated: This ensures the approval is re-triggered if any values within the conditions that you have set up are changed, ensuring continuous review.
        • Note: This option is only available if the approval is set to be requested when 'Condition based on contract variables are met'.

  • Note: Approval will not reset if the required conditions for the approval are no longer met. For further details refer to this section.    
  1. Restrict Actions: (NEW FEATURE)
    • Who Can Skip This Approval?: 
      • Control who (individuals or teams) can skip a particular approval.
    • Who Can Download the Contract?: 
      • Control who can download the contract while this approval is in progress. This is a useful setting to prevent contracts without the necessary approvals from being shared offline.
    • Who Can Send the Contract to Counterparties?: 
      • Similar to downloading, you can restrict who can share the contract with counterparties while this approval is in progress. This is a useful setting to prevent premature sharing of the contract with the counterparty. 

  1. Save Your Approval:
    • Click "Save" to finalize your approval setup.

Pausing Approval Collection (NEW FEATURE)

The "Pause Approval Collection" feature temporarily halts the approval process at a specific point. This can be used when you need to:

  • Wait for External Actions: Pause approval collection until a counterparty completes its review or other external actions (eg. check to make sure Vendor is onboarded on our ERP solution) are finished.
  • Control the Approval Flow: Pause collection to ensure that a contract is reviewed by certain individuals or teams before proceeding to the next level of approval.

Note: This feature is only available within ordered (sequential) approval sets. You cannot pause approval collection within an unordered (parallel) set.

How to Use Pause Approval Collection:

  1. Click "Pause Approval Collection": Find the "Pause Approval Collection" button.

  1. Configure the Pause:
    • Resume When?: 
      • Select the event that will automatically resume approval collection from the dropdown menu. There are two options:
        • User manually resumes approval collection: Use this when you want a user to manually resume the approval process. For example, you might pause approvals until the sales team completes the negotiation of the contract with the counterparty. When they're ready, they can resume the approval collection and take the final signoff.
          • Note: A task is created on Business user of the contract to manually resume approval collection.
        • Contract is reviewed by all counterparties: This option is helpful when the approval process should resume only after the counterparty completes its review. For example, if you want the Finance team to review a contract only after the legal team and the counterparty have both reviewed it, you can add a pause before the Finance team's approval until the counterparty's review is complete. 
          • Note: this option is only available in template workflows. For template contracts which undergoes redlining, this pause will have to be resumed manually.

Note: Any user with viewer access to the contact can manually resume the approval collection.

  • Instructions: Add clear instructions for users on when should the approval collection be resumed(e.g., "Please resume only after both the parties have completed all negotiations").

  1. Save Your Pause:
    • Click "Save" to finalize the pause setup.

Example:

Imagine a template contract workflow where you want legal to review a contract first, followed by finance. However, you don't want finance to approve the contract until the counterparty has completed their review. You could set up the following:

  1. Legal Approval: This approval is collected "Always."
  2. Pause Approval Collection: The pause is set to resume when the "Contract is reviewed by all counterparties."
  3. Finance Approval: This approval is collected "Always".

Reordering Approvals

  • Enable order for approvals: Toggle on "Collect approvals in order" to enable ordering.

You can easily reorder approvals using the following two methods:

  • Drag and Drop: Click and hold on the approval you want to move and drag it to its desired position in the list.

  • Direct Edit: Click on the order number to the left of the approval and directly edit the number to change its position in the list.

Duplicating Approvals (NEW FEATURE)

If you have an existing approval setup that you want to use as a template for a new approval, simply click the "Duplicate Approval" button to the right of the approval. This will copy all of the settings from the original approval. You can then make any necessary changes to the new approval, such as the name or instructions, and save it.

FAQs

  • I have set a finance approval for my workflow that is supposed to trigger if the deal value of the contract is more than 10,000 USD. Will the finance approval reset every time the deal value changes if I configure the approval to reset when 'values of variables set up in above condition are met'?

Let’s say the contract is created with a deal value of 11,000 USD, since this satisfies the approval condition (deal value > 10,000 USD), the approval will be requested and the finance team will approve the contract. 

Now the business team has updated the deal value to 12,000 USD, in this case, the condition (deal value > 10,000 USD) is still satisfied therefore the approval will be reset when the deal value gets updated to 12,000 USD. Let’s say the finance team approves the contract again. 

Now again if the business team updates the deal value to 9,000 USD, the condition (deal value > 10,000 USD) is not satisfied anymore, therefore even though the deal value is updated, the approval won’t reset. Additionally, this approval will no longer be required. 

  • How should I set approvals if I want to collect all the approvals just before getting the contract signed?

In the legacy approvals system, you could directly add pre-sign approvals and these approvals would trigger once a user attempts to make the contract for execution (for third-party paper contracts) or once the contract review is completed by all counterparties (for template contracts).

In the new approvals system, you can add all the necessary approvals and then add a pause before the 1st approval, this will allow you to ensure that the approval collection does not start immediately after the contract is created. For third-party paper contracts, you can add a manual pause. For template contracts, you can add a manual pause or an automated pause which resumes when all counterparties complete the contract review.

 

 

 

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