Approve or reject a submission

Action a submission that's been uploaded by an external party — either approving it through the chain to Approved status, or rejecting it with feedback so the recipient knows what to fix.

When to use this

Whenever a Docs Submitted record moves to Received status — meaning the external party has uploaded the document via the portal and it's now waiting for internal review. This is the single most repeated internal-user action in the SuiteApp.

Prerequisites

• You are listed as an approver on the Certifiable Document type, or someone in your approval chain has delegated to you
• The Docs Submitted record is in Received or Pending Approval status

Walkthrough

Approving a submission

1. Open the Docs Submitted record. You'll find it via:
   • The notification email sent to you when the document was received
   • The vendor / customer / employee's FullClarity subtab, under the Required Doc that triggered the request
   • A saved search of submissions awaiting your approval
2. Review the uploaded document — click the file link on the record to view it.
3. Confirm the start date (if applicable) and end date — these were entered by the external party on the upload page but can be edited before approval if they came in incorrectly.
4. Find the Approvals subtab on the record — it shows each approver in order, with checkboxes and dates that get stamped as each approves.
5. Tick the Approve checkbox on your row and save.

What happens depends on whether more approvers remain:

• More approvers in the chain — the status moves to Pending Approval (13) and the next approver is notified
• You're the last approver — the status moves to Approved (4). The renewal countdown (if the document has an end date) starts running.

Rejecting a submission

If the uploaded document is wrong (wrong document type, expired, illegible, etc.), reject it so the recipient can correct and resubmit:

1. Open the Docs Submitted record.
2. Click the Reject action (typically a button on the record).
3. Choose a rejection reason and add a memo explaining what was wrong — this text appears in the rejection email sent to the external contact.
4. Save.

The record briefly enters Processing Rejection (14) while the rejection email is sent and approval fields are cleared, then transitions to Rejected (6). The external contact receives the rejection email with your feedback and can re-upload a corrected document via the same signed link.

Re-receiving after rejection

A rejected submission is not closed — the recipient still has the upload link and can submit a corrected document. When they do, the status moves back to Received and the approval chain restarts from the first approver.

What success looks like

• A successful approval lands the submission at Approved status, with every approver's row on the Approvals sublist ticked and date-stamped.
• The vendor / customer / employee's Required Doc reflects an in-place valid submission, with renewal countdown active if applicable.
• For a rejection, the external contact receives the rejection email with your feedback within a couple of minutes.

Gotchas

• Approvals are sequential, not parallel. The next approver in the chain is only notified after the previous one approves. If your chain has gaps (e.g. an approver on leave), the chain stalls until that approver acts or is replaced.
• Rejection clears approvals. When you reject a submission, all prior approvers' tick marks on this submission are cleared. If the recipient resubmits, every approver in the chain has to action it again — the system doesn't preserve partial approvals across the rejection.
• Out-of-order approval. Some accounts allow approvers to action their row out of order (e.g. an approver at level 3 ticks before the approver at level 2). The chain still advances strictly in order — out-of-order ticks are recorded but the system waits for the lower-level approver before notifying the next level. Check with your administrator on what the configured behaviour is.
• Approval changes don't push back to the certifiable document. Ticking an approver row on a Docs Submitted does not change the master Approver list on the Certifiable Document type. The two lists are independent — the Docs Submitted Approvers sublist is a per-submission snapshot.
• Renewal countdown starts on approval, not on upload. The clock for the next renewal request only begins ticking once the chain completes. If the chain takes weeks to clear, the renewal window effectively shrinks for that cycle.

Related

• Set up a document type
• Request a document from a vendor