At first glance, approvals seem simple. Someone makes a request, someone else clicks “approve” — done.
But anyone who’s worked inside a scaling organization knows better. Approvals are rarely just one step. They’re a process. And when that process isn’t clearly defined, tracked, or owned, things fall apart.
Requests stall. Visibility vanishes. Accountability disappears. And instead of enabling good decisions, the approval process becomes a bottleneck.
Automation doesn’t remove the need for approvals. But it does make the process around them faster, clearer, and easier to manage — without relying on memory, manual follow-ups, or endless Slack pings.
Approvals break down not because people are slow, but because the surrounding process is invisible. Think about a typical approval:
Now imagine that happening across dozens of requests — for spend, hiring, vendor onboarding, content publishing, legal reviews. It’s chaos.
Using a platform like Mello, you can wrap structure around approvals without changing how people make decisions.
Define what triggers an approval, who needs to review it, and in what order. Whether it’s sequential or parallel, conditional or universal — it’s all built into the workflow.
Each approver gets a task with a due date. No ambiguity. If they’re out of office, a fallback approver can be automatically notified.
Instead of approvals scattered across inboxes and chat threads, everything lives in one place. Each request has a history, supporting documentation, and a decision log.
If an approval is overdue, Mello can send reminders or escalate to the next level. No one has to chase people down manually.
Need to know who approved a vendor? Why a budget line item was rejected? Mello provides a full audit trail — automatically.
Here are just a few examples we’ve seen customers automate:
In each case, the goal isn’t to remove the human — it’s to support the decision with clarity, consistency, and accountability.
A 150-person tech company using Mello recently overhauled their deal desk approvals. Before Mello, reps submitted custom pricing requests via Slack. Approval from finance or leadership was inconsistent, undocumented, and slow.
After automating the workflow, they saw:
Their process didn’t just get faster — it got safer.
You don’t need to automate every approval path at once. Start with the one that causes the most pain. Usually, it’s tied to revenue, risk, or compliance.
Approvals aren’t one-size-fits-all. Mello makes it easy to adapt as you grow.
Approvals shouldn’t be a source of confusion. They should enable smarter, faster, and more consistent decisions.
By treating them as a workflow — not just a button — you give your team clarity, speed, and accountability. And you reduce the drag that slows down everything from spending to shipping.
With Mello, approvals become part of a well-orchestrated process. One that works for your team, not against them.
