Almost every business has an approval process for leave, expenses, or purchases. Almost none of them think of it as a system, which is exactly why it costs more than it should. When approvals live in email chains, WhatsApp messages, and verbal confirmations, the cost is not obvious on any single request. It shows up in the aggregate.
Where the time actually goes
A leave request sent over WhatsApp requires the employee to send it, the manager to see it, remember to respond, and someone in HR to manually update a leave tracker afterward. Multiply that by every leave request, every expense claim, and every purchase order across a 100 person company, and you are looking at dozens of small delays every week, each one small enough that nobody flags it as a problem.
No tracking means no accountability
When an approval happens in a private message, there is no record anyone else can check. If a manager forgets to respond, the employee has no way to escalate without sending an awkward follow up. If a dispute comes up later about whether something was actually approved, it comes down to scrolling through a chat history rather than checking a system of record.
The compliance angle nobody thinks about
For expense approvals and purchase orders specifically, a lack of documented approval trail becomes a real problem during financial audits or tax review. If a purchase cannot be traced back to who approved it and when, that is a gap that costs more time to explain after the fact than it would have taken to track properly from the start.
What a real approval workflow looks like
A multi step approval workflow means a request goes through the correct chain automatically, whether that is one manager or three levels of sign off for a larger expense. Everyone involved gets notified when action is needed on their end, and the full history stays attached to the request permanently. Nobody has to remember to respond because the system tracks what is still pending.
This applies across leave requests, expense claims, purchase approvals, and document sign off, all as instances of the same underlying workflow rather than separate processes each department manages its own way.
What this actually saves
Multi step approval workflows are a standard feature across serious workflow platforms, workflow automation tools, BPM suites, and enterprise systems all include them. The difference at the SME level is whether you get this capability inside the same system running your HR and payroll, or as yet another separate tool your team has to learn and maintain.
Book a demo and walk us through your current approval process. We can usually show within the call where it is losing the most time.
Adnan Khan
HR Lead, Bitsbuffer
Adnan leads HR operations and business development for Workflow Engine. He writes about Pakistani HR compliance, payroll, and workflow automation from direct operational experience.