Approval Workflows Overview

Approval workflows put a person between a negotiated deal and an active subscription. You define rules — a discount above a threshold, a particular product, a modified legal clause, or simply every deal — and the approver groups that must sign off when a rule matches. When a rep publishes a subscription version or submits a quote that trips a rule, an approval flow is opened, approvers are notified, and the deal waits until they decide. Use approvals for discount governance, legal review, and product launches where positioning needs a second pair of eyes. Approvals belong to the sales-led half of quote-to-cash: they run on quotes and subscription versions before activation, not on invoices. (The invoice status pending_approval is a separate, single-step dashboard action; see Invoicing Configuration.) Approvals are configured in the dashboard under Settings → Approvals; there is no public API for rulesets, rules, or approver groups in the 2026-04-01 API. Approval events are available as webhooks. See How Alguna Works for where quotes and subscriptions sit.

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How it works

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Key concepts

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Rulesets and rules

Rules live inside a ruleset. Every enabled ruleset is evaluated; within a ruleset, rules run in priority order and the first match wins. A rule pairs a condition with the approver groups that must sign off. A ruleset can also require the requester to write a justification when it matches. There are five condition types: Discount conditions take an operator, a threshold, and a discount type (percentage or fixed amount); several conditions combine with ALL or ANY. Full detail on Approval Rules.

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Approver groups

A group says who approves and how many of them are needed: Members are named users, or — if the list is empty — any user holding the approver role. A group’s routing mode is static (the same approvers for everyone) or by_requester (approvers chosen by who submitted the deal, so a rep’s own manager is asked).

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Approval flows

When a rule matches, a flow is opened holding one request per approver group, the current status, the decisions and their reasons, and the justification. Flows and requests share one status set: How flows progress, bulk decisions, and cancellation are on Approval Flows.

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After approval

A ruleset also sets what happens when the flow is approved: activate the subscription, send the quote for signature, or leave it for the rep to progress manually. Progression can be automatic, manual, or the requester’s choice. The Setup Guide walks through the options.

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Setting up approvals

1. Create a ruleset under Settings → Approvals and decide whether it requires a justification.
2. Add rules — each with a condition, one or more approver groups, and a priority. Put the strictest rule at the lowest priority number.
3. Configure approver groups — strategy, members or role, routing mode.
4. Enable the ruleset.

Example ruleset: A 55% discount matches rule 1 and stops; only Executives are asked. See the Setup Guide for the full walkthrough.

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Day to day

Reps see which rules matched and which groups must approve on the subscription or quote before they submit, then track progress on the deal and are notified of the outcome. Approvers are notified by email — and in Slack, if connected — and decide from Approvals in the main navigation, where they see requests assigned to them, requests they submitted, and history. Each decision carries a reason.

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Webhooks

The approval lifecycle is exposed as webhook events, so you can mirror it into your CRM, Slack, or a deal desk tool: Payloads are camelCase.

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Common use cases

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Next steps