How to Route Documents for Approval: 6 Steps to Eliminate Bottlenecks in 2025

Chasing approvals slows you down, right?

If you’re stuck in messy email threads or tracking paperwork by hand, you’re probably losing time and patience every day.

What tends to happen is, bottlenecks creep in and projects stall out when your approval process isn’t clear, fast, or trackable.

And it’s not just you—SenseTask found that companies lose up to $1 trillion annually from document processing inefficiencies. That much lost productivity adds up fast when you can’t keep things moving or see where things stand.

But here’s the thing: if you can tighten up your approval workflow and make routing documents automatic, you slash the wasted time and headaches for your entire team.

In this article, I’m walking you through exactly how to route documents for approval in a way that gets rid of those slowdowns, from pinpointing process holes to making your workflow smarter in 2025.

You’ll find out how these steps help you get documents approved faster, with less confusion and more accountability—so you spend less time chasing signatures.

Let’s get started.

1. Analyze Current Approval Process Gaps

Are your approval workflows slowing projects down?

If you’re still stuck routing documents through email or manual checklists, you probably run into frustrating approval delays all the time.

The thing is, you have to dig into where the process breaks. Bottlenecks can hide in missed emails, unclear steps, or lost paperwork. These add stress for your team and make deadlines harder to hit.

According to SenseTask, 55% of companies cite faster decision-making as a direct benefit of having automated document workflows. Fast approvals don’t just make your day lighter — they stop projects from stalling entirely.

The longer you let approval gaps go unexamined, the more you risk expensive errors or compliance problems, so it’s worth addressing head-on.

You can find and fix those process gaps.

By laying out how approvals really happen now, you’ll spot exactly where things break down. That’s the first step in making routing seamless and improving how to route documents for approval.

Once you know where the slowdowns are you can actually design a workflow around your real needs – not just what sounds good on paper.

I recommend mapping the entire approval chain, from intake to sign-off. For example, if invoices get stuck on a single manager’s desk or a paper purchase order goes missing, that’s your cue to redesign the path and set smarter checkpoints. You might even notice approvals happen faster when you automatically alert the right person and ensure document versions don’t get mixed up.

This makes future steps much easier.

If you want reliability and speed, analyzing your workflow gaps up front pays off because it helps you build an approval process that actually works for your team.

Ready to eliminate approval bottlenecks? Start a FREE trial of FileCenter today and see how your document routing can get faster and smoother.

2. Assign Clear Roles for Every Approver

Clear roles cut out document approval confusion

If you’re unclear about who’s supposed to approve what, it always slows down your process, makes mistakes way more likely, and frustrates everyone.

What tends to happen is you end up chasing down signatures or waiting for input, and people keep wondering if something’s actually moving forward or stuck on someone’s desk. That’s where blame games and missed deadlines start popping up all over.

eLearning Industry notes that resistance to change can block adoption of approval systems, but comprehensive training and gamified onboarding are vital for boosting adoption rates. If your team doesn’t really buy in, you’ll keep running into these bottlenecks no matter what tools you use.
comprehensive training programs and gamified onboarding are essential

If approvals are mired in confusion, there’s a straightforward fix you can use here.

Assigning clear roles changes everything

It makes document progress way less mysterious and actually helps you avoid delays, because everyone knows exactly what they’re responsible for at every step.

When you outline who owns which approval and communicate it upfront to your team, there’s no more finger-pointing or “I thought you had it” moments.

I usually recommend mapping out your process and naming the decision makers for every stage or document type. For example, contracts might be routed to finance, while proposals go to the project manager first. Setting up these assignments in your document management software makes routing work smoothly. This approach is at the core of learning how to route documents for approval efficiently and ensuring nobody drops the ball.

You’ll find things start moving much faster.

What’s really great is that clear roles also make your audit trail obvious and clean, which is an underrated win if you ever need to check compliance or history.

3. Set Specific Document Approval Rules

Too many approvals get stuck in limbo, right?

If you don’t set very clear document approval rules, your team might run into confusion about who needs to sign off, what criteria matter, or even which version is the right one.

I’ve seen this slow everyone down, causing costly delays when time really counts. Without standardized rules, approvals become inconsistent and hard to track, which puts way too much pressure on you—or anyone tasked with managing the process.

According to SenseTask, organizations using document automation reduce compliance-related errors by up to 85%. Those rules are make-or-break for accountability and staying audit-ready, especially when regulations change fast.

If you’re worried about missed deadlines or compliance gaps, this is the root of the problem—and there’s a fix.

Here’s where you can turn things around quickly.

When you set clear, specific document approval rules, you ensure everyone knows exactly what’s expected before approving anything. This stops bottlenecks and confusion every step of the way.

Automatic rules also keep everyone aligned so no critical approval falls through the cracks, and there’s a clear record for any audits.

For example, in my own workflow, I set rules for who approves invoices above a certain value—so the right people are always notified, and nothing gets lost. This approach keeps everything compliant and makes routing documents for approval feel effortless—almost automatic.

That’s what accountability actually looks like with the right rules.

With specific approval rules in place, you’ll see fewer errors, faster decisions, and a lot less stress chasing approvals around.

4. Design Your Automated Workflow Steps

Manual approvals feel like running in circles sometimes.

If you’re still pushing documents back and forth, you probably know how easily steps get missed and mistakes creep in when approvals aren’t mapped out clearly.

What typically happens is that without well-planned workflow steps, confusion and slowdowns multiply quickly every time a document needs review or a sign-off. People get stuck waiting on approvals, projects stall, and it can lead to costly delays or even missing compliance deadlines.

According to Feathery, automation delivers between 40–60% better efficiency and cuts manual errors by as much as 90%—automation improves overall operational efficiency. That level of improvement is hard to ignore when you’re aiming for less stress and tighter processes.

If you want reliable approvals, you can’t leave your workflow steps to guesswork.

There’s an easier way to get ahead of issues.

When you take a little time to design your automated workflow steps, you’re basically setting up a frictionless path for every document to follow for approvals. This means everyone knows what happens next, stops on the approval route are crystal clear, and nothing falls through the cracks.

Clear, automated steps reduce mix-ups between team members and keep everyone in the loop, especially those who need to sign off or provide feedback at specific stages.

Setting up customized workflow steps in your document management software shows exactly how to route documents for approval based on who needs to approve, in what order, and under what rules. For example: you can have expense reports automatically routed from a requester to their manager, then to finance, and finally to the CFO, each step tracked with full visibility.

It gives you real control over approvals.

This is why designing automated workflow steps is so useful—you avoid confusion, speed things up, and make sure every detail gets handled just right.

5. Deploy Smart Automation Software

Automation alone won’t solve your approval bottlenecks.

If your team is still juggling stacks of emails or tracking signatures in spreadsheets, you’re probably spending way too much time chasing approvals instead of moving work forward.

What I keep running into is that manual coordination leads to lost momentum and preventable errors, especially when you’re under a deadline and waiting on someone to sign off. Plus, there’s always that nagging worry that something will slip through the cracks, costing your team both money and peace of mind.

According to DocuClipper, businesses using workflow automation save an average of $46,000 annually. That’s not just pocket change—imagine reallocating that budget to growth projects or hiring.

If reducing wasted time and reclaiming budget is top of mind, you’ll want to explore a smarter solution.

Deploying smart automation software is the move here.

By putting intelligent automation to work, your approval process finally gets the consistency and transparency you’ve needed for ages. You can finally stop worrying about who’s missed what in the chain.

Automated tools instantly notify the next approver as soon as a document’s ready, track all tasks in real time, and log every step for audit purposes. Even better, automation adapts easily as you design and tweak your workflow—unlike manual routes, which always lag behind.

Example: The right document management platform lets you visually build approval steps, define rules, and automate the routing process. That’s how routing documents for approval becomes effortless—your team spends less time managing workflows, and everything is traceable from start to finish.

It’s a total productivity shift.

Smart automation doesn’t just clear bottlenecks; it keeps your team focused on what really matters, all while boosting accountability and giving you cleaner audit trails.

Ready to stop chasing approvals? Start a FREE trial of FileCenter today and see how it can simplify your document approval process effortlessly.

6. Optimize Your Workflow with Feedback

Hearing conflicting feedback can throw off your whole process.

If you aren’t actively collecting and using structured feedback, you’ll keep running into approval delays and confusion over document revisions.

I’ve seen situations where feedback is gathered ad hoc, leading to versions piling up with unclear edits and wasted time. It not only makes audits harder, but also frustrates your team when no one knows which input counts.

SenseTask reports that human-in-the-loop features in document automation solutions are present in 45% of offerings, which help workflows get better over time. This means more solutions are starting to support ongoing optimization, not just static workflows.

Without a structured feedback loop, you’re always behind on fixing choke points—so let’s look at how to actually use feedback to tighten up your approval workflow.

Here’s how I think you can change that.

Building in a feedback loop will let you spot weak points and route corrections instantly, which keeps approvals moving and your workflow transparent.

Structured feedback also creates a single source of truth instead of scattered suggestions, so you always know what’s been addressed and what needs work.

If you’re tweaking your process, you might even use automated comment prompts for each approver group, with notifications that require a response to confirm requested changes. That’s the best way I’ve found for optimizing document approval and showing your team exactly what needs their eyes, which is crucial if you’re learning how to route documents for approval effectively.

This approach puts you in control.

By actually closing the loop on feedback, you stop bottlenecks from popping up unnoticed and help everyone get to ‘approved’ status faster.

Conclusion

Chasing paperwork wastes hours every week.

Manual document approval eats up your energy and keeps your small business from growing smoothly. Missed deadlines and compliance risks just add more stress to your plate.

SenseTask found that organizations see an average ROI of 200–300% in the first year after automating document workflows. This kind of return proves just how valuable simple improvements can be. Leaning into automation means you get results that actually move the needle for your team.

The solution is simpler than you think.

By following these six steps, you’re equipped to finally escape frustrating bottlenecks and speed up every approval, every time.

I’ve watched teams transform their day-to-day by applying the lessons from how to route documents for approval, especially once they built automation and clear roles into their system. Transparent tracking and fewer errors really do work wonders.

Start with just one step from this guide and put it into practice today.

You’ll get back your time and peace of mind.

Ready to experience smoother approvals? Start a FREE trial of FileCenter and see how easy document routing can transform your workflow.