Approvals and follow-ups that run themselves
A deterministic workflow engine — conditions, approvals, tasks, notifications, waits and escalations wired as a step graph — with a dry-run tester, an approvals inbox, an engine-owned task queue and a nightly escalation sweep.
Seven step types, one graph
Condition, approval, task, notify, wait, escalate and action nodes wired by next / on-true / on-false edges. The engine walks from the cursor, emits its decisions, suspends at an approval or a wait, and resumes when the approval is decided or the timer fires. Cycle detection and a step cap stop a runaway chain rather than looping forever.
Deterministic by construction
The evaluator is pure — no I/O and no clock of its own; the caller injects the time. The same definition against the same facts always produces the same decisions, and the database layer persists only what the engine decided. Condition nodes share their operator table with the single-step business rules, so there is one source of truth for the comparisons.
Start from a template, test before you ship
Three standard templates — an overdue invoice raising a collection task that escalates to a manager after 72 hours, an approved quotation creating the sales order and reserving inventory, and a large invoice routed through manager approval — plus blank definitions and anything a pack seeds. A dry run evaluates a definition against a facts snapshot and shows the full decision trace without persisting a thing.
Inboxes, tasks and a sweep that doesn’t double-fire
Approvals land in an inbox where approve or reject with a comment advances the parent instance, including multi-level chains. Tasks are engine-owned and keyed, so the nightly overdue-and-escalation sweep is idempotent and re-running it never duplicates work. Dispatch happens after the originating write commits — a workflow failure is written to the audit log, never rolled back into your invoice.
What’s included
- Condition, approval, task, notify, wait, escalate and action steps
- Branching graph with cycle detection and a runaway-chain cap
- Pure, clock-injected evaluator — reproducible decisions
- Template gallery, blank definitions and pack-seeded workflows
- Dry-run tester with a full decision trace, nothing persisted
- Approvals inbox with comments and multi-level chains
- Engine-owned task queue, kept distinct from CRM tasks
- Idempotent nightly escalation and overdue sweep
- Threshold approval matrix — discount %, deal value, credit limit
- Dispatch after commit; failures audited, never rolled back into the write
Frequently asked
How do I author a workflow?
From the template gallery or a blank definition, editing the step graph as JSON, then dry-running it against a facts snapshot to read the decision trace before you activate it. A visual drag-and-drop canvas is a later polish — today the JSON editor is the honest, functional surface.
Can a workflow break a save?
No. Dispatch is scheduled after the originating transaction commits and runs out of band; if a workflow fails it is recorded in the audit log as a failed dispatch, and the invoice, quote or budget you saved is untouched.
Where else do approvals show up?
Beyond the engine’s own inbox: a threshold approval matrix for discount, deal value and credit; budget approvals; purchase-payment approval in procurement; broker-commission approval in the real-estate pack; and the human approval step in front of every AI agent run.
Is any of this AI?
No, and deliberately. The evaluator is a pure function of your definition and the facts captured at the trigger — no model, no randomness, no wall clock. That is what makes the resulting approval trail defensible.
What exactly is included in Workflows & Approvals · Cloud edition?
condition, approval, task, notify, wait, escalate and action steps, branching graph with cycle detection and a runaway-chain cap, pure, clock-injected evaluator — reproducible decisions, template gallery, blank definitions and pack-seeded workflows, dry-run tester with a full decision trace, nothing persisted and approvals inbox with comments and multi-level chains, and 4 more. Every item on that list is a working screen you can open in the trial rather than a capability described in the abstract.
How is workflows & approvals · cloud edition handled differently here?
It rests on seven step types, one graph, deterministic by construction, start from a template, test before you ship and inboxes, tasks and a sweep that doesn’t double-fire. The distinction that matters is that these are structural rather than cosmetic — the behaviour is built into how records are posted, not layered on as a report you have to remember to run.
Does Workflows & Approvals · Cloud edition work offline?
On the Desktop edition, yes — completely. condition, approval, task, notify, wait, escalate and action steps and branching graph with cycle detection and a runaway-chain cap run against a local database on your own machine, so the screens behave the same with the network unplugged as with it connected. AI and billing are the only two things that reach out. On the Cloud edition workflows & approvals · cloud edition runs in the browser and needs a connection.
Does Workflows & Approvals · Cloud edition post to the real books?
Yes, and that is the whole reason it lives in this product rather than beside it. What seven step types, one graph records lands in the same posted double-entry ledger the Trial Balance, P&L and GST returns are built from — so there is no second set of workflows & approvals · cloud edition numbers to reconcile against the first.
How does Workflows & Approvals · Cloud edition affect my GST?
It feeds it directly rather than sitting alongside it. CGST/SGST and IGST are split from HSN or SAC and place of supply as each document is raised, so whatever workflows & approvals · cloud edition produces is already correct when GSTR-1, 3B and 2B reconciliation are drawn off the same books. The return matches the accounts because it was never a separate exercise.
Does Workflows & Approvals · Cloud edition cost extra?
No. Workflows & Approvals · Cloud edition is part of the accounting core rather than a paid add-on, so deterministic by construction is there on the entry tier exactly as it is on the highest one. What the tiers change is reach and depth — devices, multi-branch and multi-warehouse reporting, and whether the conversational AI copilots are switched on.