📎 This article includes 1 downloadable practice file ↓
In this article
Purchase requests, leave, expense claims: approvals by email get lost. Power Automate’s Approvals action sends a request, waits, and records the decision.
Build a purchase approval
- Trigger: a Microsoft Form “Purchase request” › When a new response is submitted + Get response details.
- Start and wait for an approval: type Approve/Reject – First to respond, assigned to the manager, details with item, amount and reason.
- Condition on Outcome = “Approve”.
- Yes: email the requester and log the row in Excel. No: email the rejection with the approver’s comments.
Approvers can respond from Outlook (actionable message), Teams (Approvals app) or the Power Automate mobile app.
💡 Route by amount: a Condition before the approval sends requests above ₹50,000 to the finance head and smaller ones to the team manager.
Types
| Type | Use |
|---|---|
| First to respond | Any one of several approvers |
| Everyone must approve | All listed approvers |
| Custom responses | Options like “Approve”, “Send back”, “Reject” |
Where people go wrong
| Problem | Fix |
|---|---|
| Requests wait forever | Set a timeout in the action settings and escalate |
| No audit trail | Log outcome, approver, date and comments |
Practice
Create a simple purchase request form and build the approval from the steps file.
📎 Practice files for this article
- 📄Lesson 5 step-by-step guidePrintable steps to build the flow.⬇ TXT · 409 B
Free to use for learning. Files with macros (.bas) are plain text — import them with Alt+F11 → File → Import File, and always test on a copy.
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