Approvals should control real risk. Too many approval steps create shadow processes, delayed work and managers who approve without reading.
Define what risk the approval is controlling: spend above a threshold, stock adjustment, refund, supplier onboarding or access to sensitive data. Routine low-risk actions can often follow rules without requiring a manager every time.
An approval screen should show the information needed to decide: amount, requester, history, reason, supporting documents and the consequence of approval. If the approver must open five systems, the workflow is not really automated.
Define delegates, expiry or escalation rules so one person on leave does not freeze an operation. Record who made the final decision and whether they acted as a delegate.
Store request, decision, timestamp, actor and relevant before/after values. Avoid editable free-form history that can no longer prove what happened.
If nearly every request is approved immediately, the control may not be adding value. If requests wait for days, investigate the bottleneck. Workflow data should help the organisation improve the policy, not only enforce it.