Send many approval requests at once

When many documents need approval, you end up sending requests one at a time. In standard, the approver can handle several together, but the sender does not have the same shortcut. This article shows what Business Central offers on both sides, and how you can automate sending so nobody has to remember to press the button. You also get three ways to make the process less manual.

The approver's side

On the Requests to Approve page, the approver can select several lines and choose approve, reject or delegate. Microsoft Learn explicitly says that you can approve several at a time. There is also an action that sends reminders about overdue requests.

This makes the difference when an approver has many requests in the queue: they can work through them in a few minutes instead of opening each one separately.

The sender's side

Learn describes the request as an action you choose on the page that shows the record. We did not find a description of being able to select several documents in a list and send them together. Try it yourself in a sandbox to see whether the action can be run on a selection in your lists. The result may vary from document type to document type.

Also ask your partner whether the page for your document type supports the action on a selection. The answer may differ for orders, journals and master data, and it is better to know before you build a process around it.

Four ways to avoid manual sending

Choose the solution that requires the least maintenance. A workflow that starts automatically is rarely something you have to look after afterwards, whereas your own flow in Power Automate requires ownership, a licence and monitoring.

Let the workflow start by itself. Learn mentions the creation of sales and purchase orders, quotes and invoices as events. Then the request is sent without anyone pressing anything.
Use the Automate menu. Learn describes manual flows in Power Automate, which can be started from list pages, cards and documents, and which can work on data in Business Central.
Use automated flows in Power Automate, triggered by events in Business Central.
Put the approval on the journal, not on each document. One request then covers the whole journal.

So approvals do not pile up

Set a due date on the requests, and let the system delegate automatically to a substitute after one, two or five days. These are settings in the workflow, according to Learn. Use the reminders about overdue requests as a fixed weekly task.

Remember that notifications about workflow steps are sent through the job queue. If it is stopped, it looks as if nobody has been asked to do anything.

Also agree who approves when the main approver is on holiday, and set up the substitute in Approval User Setup in good time.

An example: purchase orders over an amount

A typical example is purchase orders that must be approved by a department manager if they are over a certain value. Instead of the purchaser sending each order, the workflow can start when the order is created, and only orders over the amount move on. The approval limit is set under Approval User Setup.

Then the purchaser does not have to remember anything, and the approver can handle several requests at a time on the Requests to Approve page. It is the cheapest way to reach the same goal as a bulk send, and it only requires setup, no development.

The drawback is that you lose the option of collecting orders before they are sent. If it matters that one person takes a view on a whole package, a journal or a Power Automate flow is a better choice.

The idea

Bulk Approval Sender is on our list of possible apps. The thought is to send or cancel approval requests on several documents at the same time. It is an idea we are considering, and not something you can download or buy. See the other ideas if you want to follow along.