Electronic Approvals

Why Approvals?

Most bylaws require more than one person to sign off before money moves — a second signature on a reimbursement, two people confirming a bank reconciliation, a board vote before a new vendor gets paid. Traditionally that meant printing something for a wet signature, or forwarding an email chain and hoping everyone eventually replies.

Approvals lets you collect that sign-off inside BeeKeeper instead. You pick who needs to weigh in, they get an email with a secure link, and every request, decision, and change is saved to a permanent record — the kind an auditor can actually read.

Approvals works on the four things a board typically signs:

• Expense reports — before an expense report is paid
• Deposits — the Cash Verification Form your bylaws may require two counters to sign
• Bank reconciliations — the “prepared by / reviewed by” lines on your reconciliation report
• Vendors — before a new vendor is added or paid

Requesting a Review

On any of the four item types above, open the item and look for the Approvals section near the bottom of the page.

1. Click Request Review
2. Check off who should review it — everyone on your team who has accepted their invitation shows up here, including you
3. Choose how many need to agree:
   • Everyone must approve — every reviewer you picked has to say yes
   • Any [N] approvals — pick a number, and once that many reviewers approve, it’s done (handy for a five-member board where any two officers is your bylaw’s rule)
4. Add an optional message explaining what you need reviewed
5. Click Send

Each reviewer immediately gets an email with a link. They don’t need a BeeKeeper account or a password — the link itself is their access, and it works for seven days.

Example: Your bylaws say two board members must approve any reimbursement over $500. Add both of them as reviewers and choose “Everyone must approve.” The Approve button on that expense report stays disabled until both have answered.

Signing Something You Sent Out Yourself

You can put yourself on the reviewer list. This is common for a treasurer recording an expense that isn’t theirs — the payment still needs their signature under the bylaws, even though they’re the one entering it.

Asking is not the same as signing. If you add yourself, you get a review link by email like everyone else, and the item waits on your answer until you use it. Your approval then prints in the signature table alongside everyone else’s.

If you don’t add yourself, your name still appears on the record as the person who requested the review — in the item’s Approvals section, in its Activity Log, and as a line under the signature table on the PDF reading “Requested by [your name] on [date].”

BeeKeeper doesn’t check whether a particular person is entitled to sign a particular item — that’s what your bylaws are for. It records who asked, who answered, and when.

What a Reviewer Sees

A reviewer clicks the link in their email and lands on a simple page showing what’s being asked of them — the expense report, deposit, reconciliation, or vendor, along with anything already discussed about it. They choose one of three answers:

• Accept
• Reject — a reason is required, so the requester knows what to fix
• Abstain — sitting it out without blocking the others

From that same page, a reviewer can also leave a comment or ask a question, right there, without having to track down anyone’s email address.

If a reviewer answers by mistake, they can withdraw their own decision from the same link. Withdrawing reopens the round so they can answer again — nothing is lost, and the original decision stays visible in the item’s history.

Links expire after seven days. If a reviewer needs more time, whoever requested the review can click Re-send links on the item’s Approvals section to issue fresh ones. The whole request can also be withdrawn if plans change — this immediately stops all the links from working, but nothing already decided is deleted.

If Something Changes Mid-Review

If someone edits a detail that actually matters while a review is in progress — who a reimbursement is paid to, or how — the signatures already collected stop counting automatically, and every reviewer is asked again on fresh links. Nothing is deleted; the item’s history records exactly what changed and which earlier decisions were voided as a result. This keeps a reviewer’s “yes” tied to the version of the item they actually saw.

Minor edits, like fixing a typo in a memo, don’t reset anything.

Activity Log

Every item now has one Activity Log near the bottom of its page — a single, permanent timeline that merges what happened (submitted, reviewed, approved, edited, reconciled) with the conversation about it. It replaces the separate Internal Notes and History sections you may remember from before.

Nothing in the Activity Log can be edited or deleted, except that the person who wrote a comment can remove their own comment. Everything else — every request, every decision, every change — stays on the record permanently.

Comments are visible to your team and to anyone currently reviewing the item. If the item is an expense report, the person who submitted it never sees the Activity Log or any comment in it — it’s for your team’s and reviewers’ eyes only.

Paying an Expense Report Under Review

An expense report can’t be approved and paid while a review is still open, or if a reviewer rejected the report. The Approve button (which is also where you choose how to pay — check, printed check, Zelle, and so on) is disabled and shows a tooltip explaining why. Once the review is withdrawn, resolved, or a new one is approved, the button becomes available again.

If a review closes without enough reviewers responding to reach a decision either way, that does not block payment — nobody said no, so it falls back to the treasurer’s own judgment.

The Report’s Status Follows the Review

An expense report’s own status tracks where its review has got to, so you can tell from the Expense Reports list whether something is yours to act on or still out with your board:

This is automatic — requesting a review moves the report to In Review, and the round closing moves it to Reviewed, whatever the reviewers decided. Withdrawing a request puts it back to Pending, since a withdrawn round decided nothing. Reviewed doesn’t mean approved: if a reviewer said no, the report reads Reviewed but the Approve button stays disabled.

The other three item types — deposits, reconciliations, and vendors — don’t have a status of their own like this. Read their standing from the badge in the Approvals section instead.

Signatures on Your PDFs

Once a review is approved, the reviewers’ names, decisions, and timestamps print automatically:

• On the expense report PDF, in place of the blank signature lines
• On the Cash Verification Form attached to a deposit, in place of the blank signature lines
• On the reconciliation PDF, in place of the “prepared by / reviewed by” lines

If an item was never sent for review, its PDF still prints blank lines for a handwritten signature — nothing changes until you start using Approvals for that item.

Finding What’s Waiting on You

• The sidebar shows an Approvals link with a badge counting how many reviews are waiting on you personally
• Your organization’s dashboard to-do list lists both reviews waiting on you and any requests you’ve sent that are still open
• The weekly to-do email includes a reminder for anything still awaiting your decision

Click Approvals in the sidebar to see three tabs: Waiting on you, In progress, and Completed.

Turning Approvals On or Off

Approvals is on by default for every organization, new and existing. To turn it off, go to Settings > Update Settings > Advanced Options and uncheck Enable Approvals.

Turning it off hides the Approvals section from the sidebar and from item pages going forward — but anything already under review at the time stays visible, and reviewers can still answer their outstanding links. Nothing in progress is interrupted.

Common Questions

Do reviewers need a BeeKeeper account? No. Reviewers answer through the link in their email — no sign-in required. The link itself is their credential, so don’t forward it to someone else.

Who can I pick as a reviewer? Anyone on your team who has accepted their invitation to the organization, including yourself. BeeKeeper doesn’t judge whether a particular person is entitled to sign a particular item — your bylaws decide that, and the record shows who asked and who answered.

If I add myself, does my approval happen automatically? No. You get a review link by email like everyone else, and the item stays in review until you use it. Sending the request and signing it are two separate steps.

What happens if a review link expires before someone answers? The link simply stops working. Whoever requested the review can click Re-send links to issue a new one, good for another seven days.

Can I ask for a review, then cancel it? Yes. Click Withdraw request on the item’s Approvals section. This stops every outstanding link immediately. Nothing that was already decided is deleted — it stays in the item’s Activity Log.

A reviewer said no by accident. Now what? They can open their original link and withdraw their own decision, which reopens the round so they can answer again. The expense report goes back to In Review along with it.

An expense report says “Reviewed” — does that mean my reviewers approved it? Not necessarily. Reviewed only means the round finished. It reads the same whether your reviewers approved it, rejected it, or never mustered enough answers — check the Approvals section to see who said what. If someone rejected it, the Approve button stays disabled.

Will the person who submitted an expense report see the Approvals or comments on it? No. The Activity Log, including every comment, is visible only to your team and to reviewers — never to the submitter. They do see the report’s Pending, In Review, and Reviewed status on their tracking page, but not who was asked or what anyone said.

Does turning Approvals off delete anything? No. Turning it off only hides the feature going forward. Any review already in progress stays exactly as it was, and reviewers can still use their links.

What if a round closes without enough people answering? It’s marked as closed without a decision. For an expense report, that does not block payment — it only blocks payment if a reviewer specifically rejected it, or the review is still open.