Document flow in a company: approvals that keep track of themselves

In most companies, document flow is a chain of e-mails with an attachment and the question “can you approve this?”. It works as long as everyone is in the office and remembers. An invoice stuck with a manager who is on leave reaches accounting after the payment deadline; a purchase request circulates for a week because nobody knows who is next. An electronic document flow is not about turning an e-mail into a form. It is about the document having a status, an owner and a deadline, and reminding people by itself whose desk it is sitting on.

What a document flow is and what it is not

A document flow is a rule: which document, in which status, goes to whom, what that person can do and what happens next. An example for a cost invoice:

• receipt: the invoice comes in (scan, e-mail, PDF), gets a number and goes to the person who codes it,
• coding: that person assigns the cost to a department and project and passes it on for approval,
• content approval: the department manager approves it or returns it with a comment,
• financial approval: above an agreed amount a second level is added,
• posting: accounting sees only approved documents.

A document flow is not a mailbox with rules, a “to approve” folder on a drive or a signature on a printout. In those solutions the document has no status, so nobody knows where it is.

What a document flow must be able to do

1. Document status visible to every authorised person: with whom, since when, what next.
2. A deadline for each step and a reminder when it passes, to the person and to their supervisor.
3. Deputies: an approver on leave has a deputy set up in advance, not appointed by e-mail on the day they leave.
4. Return with a comment instead of rejection: the document goes back to the previous step with a comment, without being created from scratch.
5. History: who did what and when, with the content of the comments. This is evidence in a dispute and during an audit.
6. Thresholds and rules: amount, department and cost type decide how many approval levels there are and who approves. The rules are set by an administrator on the company's side, not by a programmer.
7. Approval from a phone: the manager approves on the go, because that is where the request finds them.

How to design a document flow step by step

Start with one type of document. Cost invoices are a good first one, because they have a payment deadline that hurts and clear steps.

Write down the document flow as it is today, with times. Who receives it, what they do, how long it waits. Measure it on a dozen or so documents from the last month: date received, date posted. The difference is the document flow time. That is your “before” measure.

Simplify before you automate. If every invoice goes through five people, ask which of those approvals actually change anything. Often two are enough and the rest are “for information”.

Set thresholds and deputies in writing. Above what amount a second level applies, who stands in for whom. This is configuration, not code.

Define what enters the document flow and from where. A scan from a multifunction device, an e-mail to a dedicated address, an attachment from a supplier portal. Data from the invoice (number, counterparty, amount, due date) is best read automatically and passed on for confirmation instead of being retyped.

A pilot in one department for an agreed period, with the same measure as before.

Where the document flow connects with other systems

A document flow does not live on its own. After approval an invoice should go to the accounting system without retyping; a leave request to the HR system; a purchase order to the ERP. When designing the document flow you need to decide straight away which system is the source of master data (counterparties, employees, projects) and how the document moves on after the last step: file, interface, queue. A document flow that ends with a printout moves the retyping to the end of the process instead of eliminating it.

Common mistakes

• Moving all approvals from paper to the system without asking whether they are needed.
• No deputies: the document flow stalls during leave just like e-mail.
• Reminders that go to everyone and that nobody reads.
• Rules hard-coded, so changing an amount threshold means raising a ticket with the vendor.
• No connection to the target system: after approval someone retypes the document into accounting.
• Starting with the most complicated document flow (contracts with many variants) instead of the simplest one with a deadline.

Checklist

• One document type, with the “before” document flow time measured.
• Steps simplified to those that change something.
• Thresholds, roles and deputies written down and set by an administrator.
• Document sources and data capture without retyping.
• Connection to the target system after the last step.
• Reminders with deadlines and escalation to the supervisor.
• History and comments stored with the document.

At ErgoFlow we build approval flows as part of custom applications: the company sets the rules, the document goes to the ERP or accounting system after approval, and data from invoices and orders is read by our AI document agents, with confirmation by a person. Examples on the Applications page, integrations on the Automation page.

This article is for information only. The number of approval levels, thresholds and integrations depend on the company and its systems; we define the scope after an audit.