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Saturation
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Approval workflow software

Route requests, get approvals, keep production moving.

Saturation gives productions configurable approval paths for purchase orders, invoices and payments, and vendor onboarding so every request moves with full financial context.

Trusted by 17,700+ producers managing $2.7 billion in production spend.

Configurable approval paths

Route requests by amount, project, vendor, or approver role instead of relying on office folklore.

Faster decisions

Attach the budget impact to the request so the answer can happen while it still matters.

Traceable approvals

Keep a record of who approved what and why without rebuilding the trail later.

Approval flows

One chain, whatever is being approved

Branch it, delay it, dry-run it, and let the person who raised it skip their own step.

Flows

Branch it, delay it, dry-run it.

Approvals for anything

One decision chain, any record.

Unified tasks

Every open ask in one grid.

Self-approval skip

Raise it yourself, skip your step.

Schedule payments

Pay now or pick the send date.

Comments

Threads and replies, anywhere.

Activity timeline

Who changed what, and when, on every record.

Built for production approvals

A purchase request starts in a text, gets repeated in an email, gets approved on a call, and shows up days later as a charge the accountant has to decode. That is not just messy. It is slow, political, and expensive. Saturation gives productions a cleaner way to route approvals with the financial context already attached, so decisions move faster and the record survives the week. These capabilities help productions route decisions faster, show the budget impact earlier, and keep the financial trail cleaner after the answer is given.

Rule-based routing

Send the request to the right person based on threshold, role, or project logic.

Faster approval speed

Move the answer while the production can still use it operationally.

Budget-aware context

Show what the request hits before someone has to approve it.

Clear authority boundaries

Help every role understand what it can approve and what needs escalation.

Traceable approval history

Preserve who approved what and how it affected the financial record.

Approval-linked spend

Keep purchases and invoices closer to the approvals that allowed them.

How approval flows work in Saturation

The system is designed to move production decisions faster without sacrificing accountability or budget discipline.

01

Create the request

Start with the purchase order, payment request, or vendor onboarding and attach the basic context immediately.

02

Route by rule

Send it to the coordinator, PM, LP, producer, or finance lead based on configured thresholds and ownership.

03

Approve with context

Show the line, amount, and budget impact so the answer does not require another recap.

04

Preserve the trail

Keep the approval attached to the resulting spend, variance, or reporting history for later review.

Route requests to the right person.

Configure approvals by amount, project, vendor, or approver role

Keep small decisions moving quickly while escalating the bigger ones correctly

Reduce the "who is supposed to sign off on this?" lag that burns time on set and in the office

Explore production coordinators

Production approvals with Saturation

Coordinators, managers, LPs, and accountants all touch approvals differently. Here is how Saturation fits each of them.

Production office

Give the request a real home immediately.

Coordinators and office teams need a way to capture the ask once, route it correctly, and stop carrying the whole approval history in their heads.

  • Less inbox chasing
  • Cleaner approval status visibility
  • Better handoffs to PMs and accounting
Approvers

Answer from context instead of from a vague ask.

UPMs, line producers, and producers need the budget impact attached to the request so the answer can happen while the operational window is still open.

  • See budget impact before responding
  • Move fast without guessing
  • Escalate larger requests cleanly
Accounting and reporting

Keep the decision attached to the record that has to be defended later.

Production accountants and finance reviewers care about approvals because they explain the number later. Saturation makes that story easier to preserve and retrieve.

  • Stronger audit trail on overages
  • Less end-of-week reconstruction
  • Better reporting to leadership and studios

Production approvals before Saturation vs. with Saturation

Without Saturation

  • Requests bounce across texts, calls, and inboxes with no durable record
  • Approvers answer without seeing the real budget impact
  • Accounting discovers the decision later through the transaction, not the approval
  • No one is fully sure who approved what once the week gets busy

With Saturation

  • Approval paths are visible and configurable instead of living in office folklore
  • The financial context stays attached to the request itself
  • Purchases, invoices, and reporting can reference the approval that created them
  • The production moves faster and leaves behind a stronger record

What is approval workflow software, and how does it work on a production?

Approval workflow software routes a request to the right people for a decision before money is committed or spent, and keeps a record of who decided what. On a production, that means purchase orders, payment requests and new vendors are signed off by the right person, at the right dollar level, before the next step happens.

Most approval workflows are built from a few patterns. A sequential chain sends the request to one approver after another. A parallel step asks several people at once and either waits for all of them or moves on after the first answer. Conditional routing sends a request down a different path by amount, project or vendor, so a $300 expendables order does not wait on the same people as a $40,000 camera package.

General workflow tools can route any document, but they do not know the budget. A production approver needs the account, the amount and the vendor in front of them, and the approved record has to feed the PO, the payment and the cost report without being retyped.

In Saturation you build flows from recipes, which can include Purchase Order, Payment Request, Send Payment Approval and Vendor Onboarding Review, depending on the products your workspace uses. Each flow starts with a trigger that can be limited to selected projects, followed by blocks: Condition routes by amount, project or vendor, Approval requests a decision, and Wait, Notify, Send Payment and End finish the path. An Approval block can go to named workspace members, Any Admin or Any Editor, and can require any approver, all approvers or at least a set number. Approvers decide from Tasks, one at a time or in bulk, rejection reasons are recorded with the decision, and every flow run shows its current step and path.

Guides

Questions productions ask about approval flows

These are the practical questions we hear from productions trying to move decisions faster without losing control of the budget.

Yes. Approval paths can be structured around the needs of the production, the type of request, and the level of authority required.

The goal is the opposite. Saturation helps requests move faster because the request, the budget impact, and the approver are all tied together more clearly.

Yes. The approval trail remains attached to the financial record so reporting and reconciliation teams can see how the decision was made.

Flows start from a recipe: Purchase Order, Payment Request, Send Payment Approval or Vendor Onboarding Review, depending on the products enabled for your workspace. For each one the value is the same: make the request legible, route it correctly, and keep the decision on the source record.

The common types are sequential, where approvers sign off in a set order; parallel, where several people review at once; and conditional, where the route changes with the amount, project or vendor. In Saturation, connect one Approval block to another for a sequential review, set an Approval block to Any approver, All approvers or At least N for a parallel review, and add Condition blocks for conditional routing.

In a typical purchasing process the request comes first: someone asks to buy something, it is approved, and the approved request becomes a purchase order sent to the vendor. On many productions the PO itself is the request, raised by a department or the coordinator and approved before it goes out. In Saturation, a Purchase Order flow reviews the PO before it advances, and a Payment Request or Send Payment Approval flow can gate the payment.

Only if you allow it. Each Approval block has an Auto-approve submitter setting. Leave it on and an eligible submitter counts as an approval automatically, which keeps small requests moving. Turn it off when the submitter must make a separate decision, for example on large payments that need a second person. Viewers and commenters can never approve, because the approver picker excludes roles that cannot act on approval tasks.

Yes. Put both people in one Approval block set to All approvers, so every approver must sign off and a single rejection rejects the request. If the reviews must happen in order, for example the department head before the producer, connect two Approval blocks so the second approver only receives the request after the first one approves it.

The approver can add a rejection reason, which is optional and is recorded with the decision. The person who raised the request reviews that reason on the source record, corrects the purchase order, payment or onboarding details, and uses the record's resubmit action. Open requests live in Tasks, and once a decision is made the history stays on the source record's activity and in the flow run.

See more of Saturation

An approval is a gate on something. The orders it releases, the payments it authorises and the expenses it clears are the same system, so approving once is the last time anyone touches it.

Smarter purchase orders

Three-way matched before it pays.

Purchase orders

Payments

Every payment, in one place.

Accounts payable

Receipt scanning

Receipts arrive already coded.

Expense management

Move approvals faster without turning them into guesses.

See how Saturation helps productions route requests, show the budget impact earlier, and keep a usable trail behind every approval.

See approval flows
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Built for productions that are tired of spending real money through undocumented conversations.