Build n8n Multi-Step Approval Workflows Effortlessly

Category: Tutorials

Ever feel like your work is stuck in digital molasses, waiting for someone to click “approve”? You’re not alone. Many business processes, from requesting a vacation day to signing off on a new marketing campaign or approving a purchase order, require getting the green light from one or more people. Manually tracking these approvals is time-consuming, error-prone, and frankly, a bit of a productivity sinkhole. This is where building a multi-step approval workflow in n8n comes in, turning that sticky process into a smooth, automated flow that gets things done faster and more reliably.

Why Bother Automating Approvals?

Let’s be honest, chasing down approvals can feel like a full-time job itself. You send an email, wait, send a reminder, wait some more, maybe pop by someone’s desk… it’s inefficient. An automated approval workflow centralizes the process, ensures everyone gets notified, tracks the status, and automatically takes action based on the decision. Think of it like setting up a digital conveyor belt where tasks move forward automatically once the right person gives the thumbs-up. It saves time, reduces mistakes, and provides transparency – you can see exactly where something is in the process. For businesses, this means faster operations, better compliance, and happier employees (or at least less frustrated ones!).

The Core Components of an n8n Approval Workflow

Building an approval workflow in n8n isn’t magic, it’s just smart automation. It’s like building with LEGOs; you snap different pieces (nodes) together to create your desired structure. Here are the essential building blocks you’ll typically use:

Trigger Node: This starts the workflow. It could be a new row in a Google Sheet (like a new expense report), a form submission (a vacation request), a new entry in your CRM, or even a manually triggered webhook.
Data Preparation Nodes: Sometimes you need to format or enrich the data before sending it for approval (e.g., calculate totals, fetch related information).
Approval Request Node (Notification): This node sends the actual request to the approver. Usually, this is an Email node, but it could also be a message on Slack, Microsoft Teams, or even an SMS. The key is to include all necessary information for the approver and a way for them to make their decision.
Waiting/Listening Mechanism: How does n8n know if it was approved or rejected? This is crucial. A common pattern is sending links in the email/message that, when clicked, trigger another part of your workflow (often via a Webhook node) or update a specific status in a database that your workflow periodically checks.
Conditional Logic (If Node): Once n8n receives the decision (approved or rejected), the ‘If’ node acts like a fork in the road. If approved, the workflow goes down one path; if rejected, it goes down another.
Action Nodes: These nodes perform tasks based on the decision. If approved, maybe it updates a database status, sends a confirmation email, or creates a task in a project management tool. If rejected, it might notify the original submitter and update the status to “rejected.”
Multi-Step Logic: For multi-step approvals, you simply chain these notification, waiting, and conditional logic steps together. If the first approver says yes, the workflow proceeds to notify the second approver, and so on.

Building a Simple Two-Step Expense Approval Workflow: A Practical Example

Let’s walk through a common scenario: an employee submits an expense report that needs approval from their manager and the finance department.

Trigger: Start with a node that triggers when a new expense report is submitted. This could be a Google Sheets Trigger (if reports are added there), a Typeform or Google Forms Trigger, or a Webhook if submitted via a custom system. Let’s imagine it’s a Google Sheet.
Get Data: Use a Google Sheets node to read the details of the new expense report entry.
Notify Manager: Use an Email node to send an email to the employee’s manager. Include all the expense details in the email body. This is where the magic happens: include two special links in the email – one for “Approve” and one for “Reject.” These links will point back to two different Webhook nodes you’ll set up in n8n (e.g., your_n8n_url/webhook/expense_approve and your_n8n_url/webhook/expense_reject). You’ll pass the expense report ID as a parameter in the URL.
Wait for Decision: The original workflow stops here, waiting for one of those webhooks to be triggered. This is where you often need a separate workflow or a clever way to handle the response. A common approach is to have the main workflow trigger, send the email, and then end. The response handling happens in a separate workflow triggered by the approval/rejection webhooks.
Handling the Response (Separate Workflow):
- Set up two Webhook nodes, one for approve, one for reject.
- When a webhook is hit (the manager clicks a link), extract the expense ID from the URL parameters.
- Use an If node. The “Approve” webhook leads here. Inside the ‘If’, you check if a second approval is needed. Since it’s a two-step process, the “true” branch goes to the next approval step. The “false” branch (from the “Reject” webhook) goes to a different path.
Notify Finance (If Approved by Manager): If the manager approved (the ‘If’ node path for “true”), use another Email node to send the expense details to the finance department, again with Approve/Reject links pointing to different webhooks (or the same ones, but handled differently based on status).
Wait for Second Decision (Separate Workflow 2/Extension): Again, this requires listening for the finance department’s click via webhooks.
Final Action based on Finance Decision:
- Another Webhook triggers when Finance clicks. Extract the ID.
- Another If node checks if Finance approved.
- Approved: Use nodes to update the status in Google Sheets to “Approved by Finance”, send a confirmation email to the employee, perhaps create a record in an accounting system (QuickBooks, Xero, etc.).
- Rejected (by Manager or Finance): Use nodes to update the status in Google Sheets to “Rejected”, send a clear notification email to the employee explaining who rejected it.

See how we’re chaining steps? The decision at each stage dictates the next step. This is the essence of a multi-step process.

Handling Complexity and Making it User-Friendly

While the webhook approach is powerful, managing multiple waiting states and separate workflows can get complex. You might need to store the state of the approval (who approved/rejected, current step) in a database or spreadsheet that both your initial workflow and response webhooks can access and update.

Making it user-friendly means ensuring the approval emails are clear, contain all necessary context, and the approve/reject links are easy to use. For more advanced scenarios, you might build a simple interface (using a tool like Appsmith, Budibase, or even just HTML served from a web server) that the approver visits, which then triggers your n8n webhook behind the scenes.

And what about errors? What if an email fails to send? Always add Error Handling nodes to catch issues and notify you, or retry failed steps. It’s like having a safety net for your automation trapeze act.

Building multi-step approvals in n8n can seem daunting at first, but by breaking it down into trigger -> request -> wait -> decide -> act, and using the powerful combination of email/messaging, webhooks, and conditional logic, you can build sophisticated processes that save tons of manual effort. So, next time you’re faced with a process stuck waiting for a signature, think about how you can automate that approval chain with n8n!