Approvals

Some changes wait for a yes before they run. The change is held as an approval, and a reviewer approves it, declines it, or escalates it. Nothing changes until the approval is decided.

One principle

Ask before what can't be undone, and report what can. A draft, an edit, or a moved date runs at once and shows in Activity. Issuing an invoice, sending to a customer, moving money, and deleting wait for a yes, unless you decide otherwise.

Approvals come third, after access:

1. Access decides whether an actor may make a change at all.
2. Acting for decides whose access an agent works with.
3. Approvals decide which allowed changes wait for a yes.

An approval never grants anything. It can only hold or refuse a change that access already allows.

Authority and controls

Two things decide whether a change waits, and they apply to agents and people alike:

What	Answers	Example
Authority	How much may this actor do on its own?	Continual may draft invoices, not issue them
Controls	Which changes need review, whoever makes them?	Invoices over 10,000 need review

A change runs when it is within the actor's authority and no control holds it. Otherwise it waits as one approval, decided the same way, whatever held it.

Authority: how much anyone may do alone

Every actor, a person or an agent, has authority limits: how much it may do without review, such as issuing invoices up to 10,000 or paying up to 5,000. Limits come with roles, as they do in a finance team's approval matrix, and you raise them for one actor as it earns trust.

Actor	Edits	Deletes	Finalizes	Sends	Pays	Changes access
A member	Any	Any	Any	Any	Any	No
An admin	Any	Any	Any	Any	Any	Yes, reviewed
Continual	Any	Asks	Asks	Asks	Asks	Never

Coming: authority limits as written above, set by role and raised for one actor at a time. Today, Continual's limits are one policy every organization starts with, Agents ask before they commit or delete: Continual edits freely, and asks before it finalizes a Document, sends, grants access, or deletes anything.

Controls: rules for everyone

A control is a rule the business keeps no matter who makes the change, a person or an agent, an admin included. Finance adds one when you install it, Large invoices need an admin: issuing an invoice over 10,000 waits for review by an admin who did not ask for it.

Changes to who may do what, such as roles, limits, and controls themselves, are always controlled, so nobody can loosen a rule to slip a change past it.

Coming: controls placed on a legal entity or a team; thresholds compared in your currency; and reviewers named by role, group, or manager, including chains such as a manager and then finance.

Reviewers

A reviewer decides an approval: any actor with enough authority for the change. One rule never changes: whoever asked never reviews their own change, and neither does anyone it asked for.

Today, every reviewer is a person:

• If the rule names who approves, someone allowed to approve where the change acts decides, such as an admin for a large invoice.
• If it names no one, the person Continual worked for decides.

Coming: agents review too. A reviewer agent decides routine approvals up to the risk it is trusted with, and escalates the rest: to an actor with more authority, or to more checks first, as a wide code change gets extra testing. You choose where escalation stops, and move that line as trust grows. An organization whose reviewers are all agents runs on its own, with nothing else changed.

When Continual asks you

When Continual holds a change only because it lacks the authority, you are not reviewing someone else's work: you decide whether to make it your own. Coming: you adopt the change, its card says Send or Issue, and your own limits and every control still apply. Today you choose Approve.

Example: Continual issues an invoice

You ask Continual to bill Northstar for the confirmed order.

1. Continual drafts the invoice. Drafting is an edit, so it runs.
2. It reaches Issue invoice, which binds the business, so the default policy holds it.
3. Your thread shows a card for the held change, with Decide.
4. You choose Decide, check the exact change Continual would make, and choose Approve.
5. The invoice is issued, and Continual carries on.

Approve or decline

1. 1

   Choose Decide

   The approval's to-do opens in its own thread. It shows the Action and the exact input that would run.

2. 2

   Choose Approve or Decline

   Nothing changes until you choose Approve.

You choose	What happens
Approve	The change runs as it was asked, for whoever it was asked for
Decline	The change does not run, and Continual does not try it again unless you ask

Either way, the approval records who decided, and its to-do closes. If an approved change is refused when it runs, for example because the record changed, the approval stays open and says why. If you write to Continual instead of deciding, the held change is withdrawn, and Continual reads your message.

What an approval keeps

An approval is a record under the record it is about, so anyone who can see that record sees it. It keeps:

• The Action and input that were asked for, and the input that ran.
• Who asked, and for whom.
• The rule that held it.
• Who decided, and a note.

An approval moves through these statuses:

1. Open
2. Approved
3. Declined
4. Withdrawn

Set the rules today: policies

Today, both an agent's limits and controls are written as policies, in the Policies section of the organization's settings, or of yours. Choose Add policy to create one.

Setting	What it controls
Object	The kind of record it governs, such as invoices; every kind when empty
Operations	The Actions it governs, by name
Consequences	Without operations, the kinds of change: Edits, Deletes, Commits, Says
When	Only records that match a filter, such as invoices over 10,000
Applies to	Everyone, People, or Agents
Effect	Require approval, or Deny to refuse the change outright
Approver	The permission whoever decides must hold, such as approving requests; without one, the person an agent works for

A policy for Agents sets Continual's limits; one for Everyone or People is a control. Commits are changes the business is bound by. Coming: policies give way to authority limits on roles and to controls with named reviewers.