Power Automate Approval Workflows

Every day your business loses time — and money — waiting for approvals. A purchase order sits in an inbox. A contract waits for a sign-off that's delayed by an out-of-office. A new starter can't access systems because HR approval is stuck in an email chain. These aren't trivial inconveniences; they're operational bottlenecks that compound across every department, every week of the year. Microsoft Power Automate gives UK businesses a practical, low-cost way to replace manual approval chains with automated workflows that are faster, auditable, and fully under leadership's control.

Most business leaders significantly underestimate how much time their teams spend chasing approvals. When you add up the hours spent sending reminder emails, checking whether someone has seen a request, and resubmitting lost paperwork, the figure is often startling.

Beyond lost time, manual approval processes carry real risk. There's no audit trail — so when a decision is challenged, you may have no record of who approved what, when, and on what basis. For regulated industries, that's a serious governance gap.

Power Automate is Microsoft's workflow automation platform, included in most Microsoft 365 business licences. It connects your existing tools — Outlook, Teams, SharePoint, Dynamics, and hundreds of third-party systems — and automates the handoffs between them.

For approval processes specifically, Power Automate means that when someone submits a request — for budget, resource, leave, or anything else — the right people are notified instantly, can approve or reject with one click (from their phone, laptop, or Teams), and a full audit trail is recorded automatically. No emails to chase. No paperwork to file. No ambiguity over what was decided.

Power Automate can automate approvals across virtually every function. These are the workflows our clients find most impactful:

At a conceptual level, every approval workflow follows the same pattern: a trigger, a routing decision, an action, and a record. Here's what that looks like in practice:

The Core Building Blocks

Sequential vs. Parallel Approvals

Power Automate supports two fundamental approval patterns, and choosing the right one matters:

To make this concrete, here is a full walkthrough of how a typical purchase order approval workflow is built for a UK business with 50–250 employees. This is one of the most commonly requested workflows we deliver — and one of the most impactful.

The Scenario

A company currently handles purchase order approvals by email. Staff send requests to their line manager, who forwards to Finance if the amount is over £1,000. There's no consistent format, approvals frequently get lost, and the Finance Director has no visibility until invoices arrive. The goal is to automate the entire process with appropriate controls and a full audit trail.

Step 1: Build the Submission Form (Microsoft Forms → SharePoint)

A Microsoft Form is created with the following fields: Requester name, department, supplier name, description of purchase, amount (£), expected delivery date, and business justification. On submission, Power Automate creates a new item in a SharePoint list called "Purchase Requests" — this list becomes the system of record for all requests.

Step 2: Trigger the Workflow

Power Automate monitors the SharePoint list for new items. The moment a new purchase request is added, the flow triggers. The first action retrieves the full details of the request — amount, requester, justification — and stores them as variables for use throughout the workflow.

Step 3: Route Based on Amount

A condition checks the amount field:

Step 4: The Approver Experience

Each approver receives a notification in Microsoft Teams and Outlook simultaneously. The notification includes all the request details — supplier, amount, justification — plus an Approve and Reject button. Approvers can respond from their phone in seconds. If they want to add a comment or ask for more information, there's a comments field built into the approval card.

Step 5: Automatic Reminders and Escalation

If the approver hasn't responded within 48 hours, Power Automate sends a reminder automatically — no one has to chase manually. After 72 hours with still no response, the workflow sends the approval to the next person in the chain (e.g., if the line manager hasn't responded, it goes directly to the Finance Manager), and the line manager receives a notification that the request has escalated.

Step 6: Outcomes and Notifications

Step 7: The Audit Trail

Every action is automatically logged in the SharePoint Purchase Requests list: who requested, who approved at each stage, what time each approval was given, and any comments made. The Finance Director can run a Power BI report across this list at any time to see approval volumes, average processing time, most frequent requesters, and spending by department. This transforms a previously invisible process into a fully transparent and reportable one.

You don't need a developer to build a basic approval workflow. But understanding the build process helps you ask the right questions when working with a partner — and ensures the workflow is designed correctly from the start.

Step 1: Define the Process Before You Build

The most common mistake is jumping straight into Power Automate before the process itself is properly defined. Answer these questions first:

Step 2: Build the Submission Form

Most approval workflows begin with someone submitting a request. Microsoft Forms or a Power Apps form feeding into a SharePoint list are the most common starting points. The form should capture everything the approver needs — no more, no less. Unnecessary fields slow adoption; missing fields lead to approvers asking for more information outside the workflow, breaking the process.

Step 3: Configure the Approval Action in Power Automate

Once your trigger is set up (typically a new item in a SharePoint list), you add the Approval action. Power Automate has a dedicated Approvals connector with built-in actions for the approval types covered above. You configure the approver(s), the title and details of the request, and the response options (Approve / Reject, or custom responses like Approve / Return for Revision / Reject).

Step 4: Build the Outcome Branches

After the approval decision, the workflow branches based on the outcome. A rejection might trigger an email to the requester with the approver's comments and a link to resubmit. An approval might update the SharePoint record, send a confirmation, and create a task in Planner for the relevant team to action.

Step 5: Add Escalation and Reminders

Set a time limit on approvals. If an approver hasn't responded within 48 hours (or whatever is appropriate for your process), a reminder is sent automatically. After a further period, the request escalates to a backup approver. This is where automated workflows genuinely outperform email chains — the chasing happens automatically, without anyone having to think about it.

One of the most common questions we hear from business leaders is: "How long does this take, and what will it cost?" Honest answers:

For most UK SMEs, the first meaningful approval workflow can be live within a week. The return on investment is typically measured in weeks, not months — particularly when you account for the staff time previously spent chasing, filing, and resubmitting approvals manually.