Approvals & Sign-Off

Before a workpack can be worked on site, it usually needs to be reviewed and approved. Assignar Pay lets you build a configurable approval chain — an ordered list of approvers — then route the workpack through them one step at a time. This guide covers setting up the chain, submitting for approval, recording a decision, handling revision rounds when changes are requested, capturing an out-of-band approval, and the manager-only status override.

Approvals sit between authoring a workpack and executing it on site. They are most relevant to QA managers and document owners who build the chain, and to principal-contractor or client reviewers who sign off.

The Approval Lifecycle

A workpack moves through a clear sequence of statuses:

1. Draft — the workpack is being authored. The approval chain is freely editable here.
2. Submitted — the owner has sent it for approval. It now sits with the first approver in the chain.
3. Approved → Active — once the final approver approves, the workpack becomes active and is ready to be executed on site.
4. Rejected — an approver rejected it. The owner revises it (opening a new revision) and re-submits.

If a workpack has no approvers when it's submitted, it self-approves and goes straight to Active.

Setting Up the Approval Chain

The approval chain lives on the workpack's detail page in the Approvers panel. You need manage permission on workpacks to edit it, and the chain is fully editable only while the workpack is in Draft.

Adding and ordering approvers

1. Open the workpack and find the Approvers card.
2. Click Add approver to append a new step. Each step is numbered in the order it will run.
3. For each step, choose the approver type:
   • Internal — a member of your team. Use the person picker to select them. (The picker is scoped to people connected to the workpack's client and project.)
   • External — someone outside your organisation, such as a principal-contractor or client reviewer. Enter their email address; they'll be invited to review via a secure magic link and see the workpack in their Incoming view.
4. Optionally enter a role for the step (for example, "Client QA" or "Site Engineer") to record why that person is in the chain.
5. Re-order steps with the up and down arrows. Approvers are processed strictly top to bottom — step 1 must decide before step 2 is asked, and so on.
6. Remove a step with the trash icon.
7. Click Save to store the chain.

Every step needs either a selected person (internal) or an email address (external) before it can be saved.

Changing an approver after submission

Once a workpack has been submitted, you can no longer freely add, remove, or re-order steps — but a manager can surgically replace an approver who hasn't yet decided.

1. In the Approvers panel, find a step still marked pending.
2. Click Replace.
3. Choose the replacement (internal person or external email), optionally adjust the role, and enter a reason for the swap. The reason is required and is kept in the workpack's history.
4. Confirm. The new approver takes over that step.

Submitting a Workpack for Approval

When the workpack is in Draft and you have manage permission, a Submit button appears in the page header.

1. Click Submit.
2. The dialog explains what happens next: if the workpack has approvers, it routes to the chain; if it has none, it self-approves to Active.
3. Choose how much external reviewers can see:
   • Approval only — external reviewers see the workpack only while it's awaiting their decision.
   • Ongoing — external reviewers keep visibility after approval.
4. Confirm. The workpack moves to Submitted and the first approver becomes the current step.

Reviewing and Making a Decision

When it's your turn to decide, the workpack header shows a Review and decide action. Only the current-step approver can open the decision screen; if you're not the current approver (or you've already decided), you're returned to the workpack detail page.

The decision screen shows a read-only summary of every activity in the workpack, including any reference drawings or specifications attached to each row, so you can review the full plan before signing off. Below the summary is the decision form with two tabs.

Approve

1. Select the Approve tab.
2. Sign in the signature pad. A signature is required to approve.
3. Optionally add comments.
4. Click the approve button.

What happens to the workpack:

• If there's a later approver in the chain, the workpack stays Submitted and moves to that next approver.
• If you're the final approver, the workpack becomes Active and is ready for on-site execution.

Request changes / Reject

1. Select the Reject tab.
2. Enter comments explaining what needs to change. This is required (at least 10 characters) so the owner has actionable feedback.
3. Click the reject button.

What happens to the workpack:

• The workpack moves to Rejected.
• Every later step in the chain is cleared, so the workpack won't fall through to other approvers.
• The owner is notified that the workpack needs revision.

External reviewers

When the current step is an external (email) reviewer, internal team members viewing the approve screen see an informational note rather than the decision form — the decision belongs to that reviewer, who acts on it from their own Incoming view via their magic link.

Revision Rounds

When changes are requested, the rejection feedback is shown prominently at the top of the workpack detail page, including the comments and who left them.

To make changes and try again, the owner (or a manager) uses the Revise action in the header:

1. Click Revise.
2. The dialog confirms which revision number will be opened (the current revision plus one).
3. Confirm. The workpack returns to Draft as a fresh revision: the activity rows and approval chain are carried over so you can adjust them, and the previous revision is preserved as immutable history.

After revising, edit the rows and approvers as needed, then submit again. The revision number is shown as a badge on the workpack so everyone knows which round they're looking at.

Recording an Offline (Out-of-Band) Approval

Sometimes an external reviewer signs a printed or emailed copy of the workpack rather than using the in-app decision screen. A manager can transcribe that decision into Assignar Pay using the Record offline decision panel, which appears on the detail page while the workpack is awaiting a decision and a pending approver remains.

1. Choose Approve or Reject.
2. Enter the approver name — who physically signed. This is required.
3. Optionally add their title and organisation for context.
4. Attach the signed PDF as evidence. This is required; the signature lives on this file.
5. For a rejection, enter comments (at least 10 characters) explaining the decision.
6. Submit.

The recorded decision behaves exactly like an in-app one: an offline approval advances the chain (or activates the workpack if it was the final step), and an offline rejection moves the workpack to Rejected and notifies the owner. The signed PDF is kept on the workpack as evidence.

The Status Override

The Override status action lets an authorised user move a workpack to a different lifecycle status outside the normal rules — for example, to recover a workpack that's stuck or to retire one that no longer applies. It's available only to users who hold the status-override permission, and it's found in the workpack's actions ("⋯") menu.

1. Open Override status.
2. A warning reminds you that overrides bypass the normal transition rules — use this only when the standard flow can't get you there.
3. Pick the target status. The workpack's current status is labelled so you don't pick it by mistake.
4. Enter a reason (at least 10 characters). The reason is kept in the workpack's history.
5. Confirm.

Note: setting a workpack to Closed via an override does not generate a closeout PDF — the dialog flags this. To produce a closeout document, complete the workpack through the normal close-out flow instead. See On-Site Execution and the Workpacks overview for how a workpack is worked through and closed out.

Related Pages

• Workpacks Overview — what workpacks are and how the full lifecycle fits together.
• Templates — author reusable, versioned templates that workpacks are created from.
• On-Site Execution — work through Hold, Witness, and Monitor points and close out the workpack.