Learn how to build set-and-forget automated workflow for business proposal approvals that involves Sales, Product, Finance and legal teams.
Table of Contents
Approval Workflow Steps
Every sales proposal sent to clients has the potential to land a big deal. That’s why it’s crucial to have a proper internal proposal review and approval process. Without it, you risk errors, inconsistencies, and missed opportunities. Moreover, a solid and robust document and workflow management system is unimaginable without a proper proposal approval workflow.
Automating this process ensures your proposal approval workflow is consistent and efficient. Proposal approval workflow automation helps you move proposals from one team to the next as soon as they complete their review. In this guide, we’ll walk you through how to build a simple workflow that brings together efforts from your Sales, Product, Finance, and Legal teams. In this workflow, we’ll automate the approval process for customer proposals, breaking it down into six simple steps:
- Form submission by the Sales team
- Approval by the Product team
- Approval by the Finance team
- Approval by the Legal team
- Adding a brand watermark to the final document
- Sending the final document to the customer via email
Choosing a Trigger
Every workflow has a starting point that is called Trigger. In this case, the most obvious trigger would be a form submission — when a customer or a sales rep fills out a form with the details necessary to calculate a personalized quote.
If you’re using a Zenphi Form, you will also be able to leverage Zenphi’s State Machine feature — it is perfect for this type of process, as it allows you to move smoothly between different teams or go back if needed. You can use branches for each department, making it easy to manage approvals from Sales, Product, Finance, and Legal.
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Task Assignment
To start the approval workflow, you need to assign a task to every team: Sales, Product, Finance and Legal (depending on your business practice). Each team should receive an email or other type of notification that there’s a new proposal awaiting for their feedback and approval.
Again, if you’re using Zenphi to build this workflow, just choose “Assign a Task” action that would handle the notifications. In Zenphi, you can use dynamic variables from the Form to populate the task and make it instantly visible for the relevant team.
Adding Conditional Logic for Decision-Making
Next step is to incorporate conditional logic into the workflow to determine the next steps. Conditional logic means that you’re telling your automation platform sometjing like this: if the proposal is approved, proceed to the next department. If not, automatically notify the requester with detailed feedback and instructions on how to revise the proposal. This ensures clarity and provides an opportunity for revisions before resubmission.
If using Zenphi, apply “If Condition” action at this stage to move forward if they approve or send an email to the requester if rejected (if rejected — use the “Send Email” action). Remember, we mentioned State Machine feature? With Zenphi, the workflow can continue to the next department using the “Change State” action — it allows you to indicate where the flow should jump to next step (that is, move forward or reassign a task).
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Sequential Department Reviews
After the initial team’s approval, the proposal moves to the next department, such as finance or legal. Each department can review their respective sections (e.g., pricing, payment terms, or contract details). If the pricing or any other critical information isn’t approved, the workflow should allow for updates or adjustments. Data requests can be triggered to gather the necessary information, which can be stored for future use once revised. For example, with Zenphi, if the pricing isn’t approved, you can use the “Request Data” action to ask for updated pricing and save it in a variable to use the approved price.
Final Approval and Feedback
Once all departments have provided approval, the proposal can be finalized. If any department raises issues or requires changes, ensure there is a clear mechanism for feedback. With Zenphi, the later can be easily implemented into the approval task itself, as each approval approval email contains a filed for comments and feedback.
Another great feature you can utilize while using Zenphi — once the proposal is approved, add your brand watermark to the final document using the “Add Watermark” action. This ensures your proposal is polished and professional before sending it to the customer [Read how to add watermarks to PDF with Zenphi]
Notifications and Communication
Throughout the approval process, automated notifications ensure that all stakeholders are informed of the status. Whether the proposal is approved or needs revision, these communications help keep everyone in the loop and drive timely actions.
We already explained how Zenphi helps you to streamline approval communications through “Assign a Task” action. Similarly, it’s very easy to automate communication with the prospect, by adding “Send Email” action as a final step of your workflow. Zenphi allows you to customize the email with dynamic data, such as the customer’s name and details about the proposal, ensuring a personalized and professional touch.
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Implementing a structured customer proposal approval workflow ensures that every step, from initial review to final approval, is transparent and efficient. By integrating conditional logic, sequential department reviews, and automated notifications, you not only streamline the process but also reduce the chances of errors or miscommunication. This leads to faster, more informed decisions, improved collaboration, and higher proposal acceptance rates.
For teams using Google Workspace, Zenphi is the ideal solution to streamline approval workflows. With its deep integration into Google apps, Zenphi allows you to automate every step of the process seamlessly, from document creation and sharing in Google Drive to approval notifications via Gmail.
Want to learn more? Book a call with a Zenphi expert today to explore how you can automate your approval workflows and save time.
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