Spreadsheet replacement
Replace the approval tracking spreadsheet with a connected AI workflow.
Move teams tracking approvals manually from fragile spreadsheet handoffs into a focused workflow with clearer ownership, live context, and connected execution.
Introduction
Approvals recorded after the fact, in a sheet nobody reads.
Almost every approval tracking process starts in a spreadsheet, and for a while that is the right call. A sheet holding pending requests, who must approve them, what they are waiting on, and how long they have waited costs nothing, takes an afternoon, and fits the process exactly — because the person who built it is the person who runs it.
The approval itself happens as a reply in an email thread, so the record of the decision lives in a mailbox and the sheet is a hand-maintained summary of it. A sheet works while there is one approver who reads everything. It fails when approval depends on who is available, because a spreadsheet has no concept of delegation and no concept of a deadline.
What follows covers that transition for teams tracking approvals manually: what the sheet holds, why it fails, what the replacement records instead, and — set out plainly further down — the case for leaving it where it is.
The problem
Four ways an approval sheet fails an audit.
An approval sheet is a log written after the decision, which means it records the outcome and none of the reasoning. What was requested, what was actually approved when the two differ, what evidence was in front of the approver, and which policy version applied — none of it is captured, and all of it is what gets asked for later.
Two approvers act on the same request in parallel, one in the sheet and one by replying to the email, and the sheet records one decision while the requester acted on the other.
The sheet holds pending requests, who must approve them, what they are waiting on, and how long they have waited, and the authoritative version of most of it already lives in Slack or Gmail. The spend was approved in a thread, the sheet has no row for it, and the reconstruction six months later depends on somebody still having the email.
You're likely here because
- Establishing whether something was approved requires searching an inbox
- The approval itself happens as a reply in an email thread, so the record of the decision lives in a mailbox and the sheet is a hand-maintained summary of it.
- When a row is stale, a request sits for over a week because the approver was away and nothing escalated
The operating problem
Why the current process stops scaling.
Move teams tracking approvals manually from fragile spreadsheet handoffs into a focused workflow with clearer ownership, live context, and connected execution.
Failure mode 1
Requested and approved are one field
Approvals are frequently partial and get remembered as total. Without both values recorded, a later dispute about what was authorised has no answer in the system.
Failure mode 2
No evidence attached
What the approver was shown is in an email that has since been archived. The approval survives and the basis for it does not, which is precisely what an auditor asks about.
Failure mode 3
No delegation
One person on leave becomes a two-week stall on every request above the threshold. The sheet has no mechanism to route elsewhere and no signal that anything is waiting.
Failure mode 4
Requests that were never seen
The characteristic failure is not refusal, it is a request nobody looked at. A static sheet gives no signal that a row has been sitting for nine days.
The record model
What the replacement holds that the sheet cannot.
- What was requested and what was approved
- As two fields. The gap between them is the one most often omitted and most often needed, because approvals are partial more often than anyone remembers.
- Evidence at the decision
- What the approver was actually shown, captured with the decision, since the thread will have been archived by the time anyone asks.
- Approver and delegate
- The delegate defined in advance, because without it one person’s absence becomes a stall on everything above the threshold.
- Policy version in force
- So a past approval can be judged against the rule that applied at the time rather than against the current one.
- Request age against a window
- Because the characteristic failure is a request nobody saw, and only elapsed time makes that visible.
- Auto-approval record below threshold
- Automatic approvals still need an audit record, and that record is what makes automatic approval defensible rather than a gap.
- Arrival channel
- Including requests raised from chat or email, since a system recording only formal submissions reports well on a minority of them.
How it works
From a log written afterwards to a decision record.
Step 01
Describe the approval tracking process
Write the threshold, approver, and delegate for each request type. The delegate is the field that will be omitted unless somebody insists, and it is the one that prevents most delay.
Step 02
Connect the systems of record
Email and chat are where requests originate and where notification has to land; the systems holding what is being approved supply the evidence. Meeting people where they already are is what stops the workflow being bypassed.
Step 03
Build the operating surface
Request intake with required evidence, an approval queue with thresholds and delegation, a decision log, and escalation when a request ages past its window.
Step 04
Migrate the workflow, not just the data
Open requests move; the historical log stays as an archive. Reconstructing evidence for past approvals is not possible and should not be attempted.
Step 05
Route the exceptions
A request sitting past its window escalates to the delegate rather than waiting, which is the single change that removes most approval delay.
Step 06
Measure time from request submitted to decision recorded
Time from request to decision at the median and the ninetieth percentile. The tail is where the frustration lives and the median hides it entirely.
Implementation path
Building approvals people cannot route around.
- 01
Name the delegate for every approver before building anything else. Without it the workflow gets bypassed the first time somebody takes a week off, and bypassed once means bypassed thereafter.
- 02
Make intake at least as easy as sending an email, and accept requests from chat and email directly. Adoption is decided almost entirely by intake friction.
- 03
Baseline time to decision at both the median and the ninetieth percentile, plus the share of requests that received no response at all. The last number is usually not zero.
- 04
Auto-approve below a threshold with an audit record. That is where most of the time saving is and it is routinely left on the table.
- 05
Run it alongside the sheet for one full cycle, then retire the file only after the parallel run holds.
Controls
Controls that matter.
Control 01
Delegation defined in advance for every approver, so absence produces a route rather than a queue
Control 02
The evidence the decision was made on captured with the decision, because approvals are questioned later and the thread will not be there
Control 03
Threshold changes versioned with effective dates, so a past approval can be judged against the policy that applied at the time
Build with Launch
Turn the operating requirement into working software.
- • Build a approval tracking app
- • Add forms, views, status, and workflow logic
- • Create role-specific dashboards
Operate with Grow
Keep the workflow connected after the interface exists.
- • Attach follow-up where the workflow touches revenue
- • Keep customer context connected
- • Measure activity through the same context
Connected context
Keep systems of record. Fix the gaps between them.
These are representative connections. UbiGrowth supports 700+ connections across business systems. Connection availability and permissions depend on workspace configuration.
The case against
When the spreadsheet is still the right answer.
If there is one approver who reads everything and is never away, email plus a log is genuinely adequate. The trigger is approval depending on availability, which is what a spreadsheet cannot model at all.
Examples
Three approvals that stop stalling.
The approver on annual leave
Pre-defined delegation converts a two-week stall into a routing decision the system makes, without anyone working out who is standing in.
Was this ever approved?
A decision log with evidence attached answers in seconds what currently requires searching an archived mailbox and hoping the person still works here.
The request that was never seen
An ageing threshold with escalation catches requests that fall between people, which in a sheet-and-email process are invisible by construction.
Measurement
Measure the workflow, not the demo.
Choose a baseline before implementation so speed, quality, exceptions, and downstream impact can be compared using the same definitions.
Model the value of moving repetitive spreadsheet work into a connected workflow.
Use the ROI calculator with your own workload, lead volume, close rate, and deal assumptions. The result is illustrative, not a guaranteed outcome.
Open the ROI calculator →Limitations and considerations
What a workflow cannot approve for you.
- Faster approvals do not improve decisions. If approval is a rubber stamp, the workflow produces a faster rubber stamp with better documentation.
- Approvals with statutory or contractual weight may have form requirements — signature, identity assurance, retention — that a general workflow should not be assumed to satisfy. Check before retiring an existing control.
- Any workflow harder to use than email gets bypassed under time pressure, and the bypassed cases are systematically the urgent and consequential ones.
- Connector coverage varies: Slack, Gmail, Google Drive are representative rather than guaranteed, and the fields exposed depend on your workspace permissions.
Keep people in control of consequential decisions.
Automate bounded, observable work first. Keep explicit approvals, escalation paths, permissions, and auditability around financial, legal, clinical, employment, coverage, or other consequential decisions. The goal is faster execution with clearer control—not unbounded autonomy.
FAQ
Questions teams ask before moving off the sheet.
How do we stop people routing around it?
Make intake as easy as email — accept requests from email and chat themselves — and make the system the only place the approval is recorded. Enforcement through policy alone loses to time pressure every time.
Can approvals be automatic below a threshold?
Yes, and that is usually where the largest saving is. Auto-approve below a value with an audit record and reserve human attention for the cases where judgement genuinely applies.
What should be captured with a decision?
What was requested, what was approved if they differ, the evidence shown, the policy version, and who decided. The gap between requested and approved is the field most often omitted and most often needed.
Will this satisfy an auditor?
It produces the record an auditor asks for. Whether it satisfies a specific control depends on identity assurance, retention, and segregation requirements that vary by regime, and that is worth confirming before retiring anything existing.
Do we still need Slack?
Yes. Slack stays authoritative for what it owns, and the new surface reads it through a governed connector rather than storing a second copy.
How do we know whether it actually worked?
Measure time from request submitted to decision recorded against the baseline you took before switching, alongside manual updates removed and how often a record turns out to be stale.
Start with ARIA
Ask ARIA to build the replacement.
Describe what the spreadsheet is really doing. ARIA plans the operating surface, connects the systems that stay authoritative, builds it, and keeps it running.
- ARIA acts only through the systems and permissions you connect.
- Connections use scoped credentials you can change or revoke.
- Actions are recorded, and consequential ones can require approval.
Start here
Rebuild the approval tracking workflow, not the file.
Name the delegate for every approver, make intake easier than email, and measure the ninetieth percentile rather than the median.