Who approves a delivery request - Pacten Guides

2026-08-24

By default, a submitted delivery request goes straight into the queue. If somebody in your business needs to see an order before it goes out — a manager, finance, or the person who owns pricing — set an approval chain and nothing will be dispatched without a decision.

You will find it under Delivery → Settings → Approvals. You need to be an owner or admin, or hold the Configure approval chains permission.

THE SHAPE

A chain is a list of steps

Each step decides who is asked, and when.

Add a step

An empty chain shows Add step. Each step you add is asked in order — step 2 is not asked until step 1 has decided.

Choose who decides

The Resolver dropdown. Each option finds people a different way — the section below covers all five.

Set a threshold, if you want one

Only above means the step is skipped entirely for requests below that amount. Leave it empty and the step always applies.

Save the chain

It applies to requests submitted from that point on. Anything already submitted keeps the chain it was submitted under.

THE RESOLVERS

The five ways to choose an approver

Two of them need something set up elsewhere first.

This is the part worth reading properly. A step can only be decided by somebody it resolves to — and two of these resolve to nobody until a prerequisite exists.

Named person — you pick one person, plus a required fallback for when they are away. Nothing to set up first. The most predictable option, and the right default when one person genuinely owns the decision.
Anyone with a role — everyone currently holding a workspace role (owner, admin, manager, and so on). Nothing to set up first, because roles always exist. Bear in mind it means everyone with that role, which may be more people than you expect.
Anyone holding a capability — a pool, where the first person to act decides. Nothing to set up first; the pools offered are the ones that make sense for delivery.
Anyone with a label — everyone carrying a workspace label such as finance or legal. REQUIRES the label to have been given to somebody first: Workspace Settings → Team, open a member, and set their labels. A label nobody carries resolves to nobody.
Head of department — the head of the requester’s own department, or of a department you name. REQUIRES three things: the department must exist, the person raising the request must be assigned to it, and somebody in it must be flagged as head. Any one of those missing and the step resolves to nobody.

Watch out

A step that resolves to nobody does not fail loudly — the request simply sits there. If you use Anyone with a label or Head of department, set the label or the department head up FIRST, then build the chain.

Tip

Not sure a chain will work? Submit one real request and watch it. If it lands with the person you expected, the chain is right. If it sits still, a step resolved to nobody.

WHAT THE CHAIN DOES

While a request is waiting

The block is real, not advisory.

The request cannot be dispatched or marked delivered. Anyone trying is told it is waiting for approval rather than being refused for permissions.
The assignee is not notified yet — telling somebody a job is theirs before it is agreed teaches people to ignore the queue.
It can still be assigned and scheduled, so the work can be arranged while the decision is outstanding.

THE DECISION

What the approver sees, and where

On the request itself — there is no separate approvals inbox.

Every app in the platform surfaces its decisions on the object being decided, rather than collecting them into one list. So an approver is notified, opens the request, and decides there — the same pattern as approving a purchase order in Supply.

They are notified

A notification goes out the moment the request reaches their step — not when it was submitted. Somebody on step 3 is not told about a request still sitting on step 1.

They open the request

Delivery → Delivery Requests, then the request itself. An Awaiting approval band sits at the top of the panel.

They decide

Approve or Decline, with an optional note. Only the person whose decision it actually is sees the buttons — everybody else sees the band explaining why the request cannot move.

Tip

Approving a step does not always finish the chain. If there are further steps, the confirmation says the decision was recorded and the request is still waiting on the next approver — the next person is notified at that moment.

Once the last step approves, the block lifts, the request can be dispatched, and the assignee is notified that the job is theirs — which is the point at which that is actually true.

TURNING IT OFF

If you do not want approvals

Doing nothing is a valid answer.

A workspace with no chain configured behaves exactly as it always has: requests are submitted, the assignee is notified, and fulfilment is never blocked. Approvals are opt-in, and removing every step from a chain returns you to that.

Back to the queue

Where requests come from, and what the columns mean.

Delivery requests →