When we automate a process, the client's first question is usually: "Will it be fully automatic?" The honest answer is often: most of it. Every process has a few points where a mistake is expensive, and there a person should approve before it continues.

The skill is in finding those few points. Put approval everywhere and the automation has only moved the manual work somewhere else. Put it nowhere and one day a small mistake quietly repeats itself a thousand times.

Three questions for every step

  1. Can it be undone? Labelling an email can; paying an invoice can't.
  2. Does it reach outside the organisation? A message sent to a customer, or data submitted to an outside system, is no longer yours to take back.
  3. How big is it? A payment of ten million tomans and one of ten billion are the same step, but not the same risk.

A step that can be undone, stays inside and is small should stay automatic. If all three answers go the other way, it needs approval. For everything in between, use a threshold.

Four approval patterns

  • Gate — the process stops until a person approves. For large, irreversible actions.
  • Threshold — automatic below a set amount or count, approved above it. The most widely used pattern.
  • Sampling — everything runs automatically, but a share of cases is reviewed afterwards. For frequent, reversible work such as sorting tickets.
  • Two-person — two people approve independently. For the most sensitive actions.

An example: a purchase invoice

An invoice arrives by email. A language model extracts the amount, the supplier and the description, and matches them against the purchase order. If the amount matches the order and is under the agreed limit, the invoice is recorded automatically. Otherwise it goes to the finance lead.

There is one exception: if the supplier's bank account differs from last time, two-person approval is required at any amount. A changed account number on a forged invoice or email is one of the most common forms of payment fraud.

Approval that actually gets read

The biggest risk with human approval is that it turns into a reflex click. Someone who sees a hundred near-identical requests a day stops reading them by the second week. A few rules help:

  • Show only what's needed, and highlight the difference. "Amount is 12% above the order" is more useful than the whole invoice.
  • Keep the numbers low. If the approver sees more than a handful a day, raise the threshold or switch to sampling.
  • Set a deadline and a stand-in. A request nobody answers should reach the next person, not hold the process forever.
  • Record the approval in the system itself. "They said OK in the chat" is not a record. Who approved, when, and having seen what, must be written down.

In summary

Good automation takes repetitive work off people and puts the important decisions in front of them more clearly. Before automating any process, mark the approval points on paper; the rest of the work is carrying out that plan.