Approval Workflow

The approval workflow ensures requests are properly reviewed before committing resources.

Who Can Approve

• ADMIN — Full authority
• MANAGER — Within their scope
• SUPERVISOR — For their teams

Configurable Workflow Engine

FreeMaint supports per-company approval workflows. Go to Company Settings → Workflows and add steps for Requests with different approver types.

Approver Types

• ROLE — any user with the specified role
• USER — one specific user
• CREATOR — the original requester
• ASSIGNEE — the assigned user
• TEAM_LEADER — team leader of the linked asset
• REQUESTER_LOCATION_MANAGER — the manager of the requester's location/section
• TARGET_LOCATION_MANAGER — the manager of the request's location/section
• REQUEST_SECTION_MANAGER — the manager (leader) of the request's Responsible Section (Team)

Required Fields per Step

Each step can require fields such as description, asset, location, category, photos, or any company-defined custom field (custom:<name>) before allowing the transition. For work-order completion you can also require a meter reading — handy for hour-meter or odometer-based maintenance.

Rejecting a Request

A request can be rejected only while it is Pending or Under review. Once approved, a request automatically becomes a work order and can no longer be rejected — cancel the resulting work order instead. If the Reject button is not shown, the request has already moved past the reviewable stage.

Quick Presets

Rather than building steps by hand, open Company Settings → Workflows, choose the Request tab, and apply a Quick preset: 'Manager approval before work order' for a single gate, or 'Two-level request approval' for a department review followed by a facility-manager approval. Each preset creates editable steps you can re-point to your exact roles.

Routing by Responsible Section

Approval can follow either where the work is (Location) or who is responsible (Section). For organizational responsibility — Building, Electrical, Workshop, etc. — model each section as a Team and set its leader as the section manager. Turn on the 'Responsible Section' field in your request form, then add a Request workflow step with the 'Section Manager (Team Leader)' approver. The request is then routed only to the manager of the section the requester selected, regardless of location — one location can host work owned by several sections. For organizations whose responsibility really is location-owned, the 'Target Location Manager' approver routes by Location instead.

Filtering by Responsible Section

The requests list can be narrowed to one or several Responsible Sections. Open the filter bar and pick the sections you own — the filter is multi-select, so 'Electrical or Mechanical' is one question, not two. It combines with every other filter and never widens what you are allowed to see: if your role is scoped to your own teams, asking for a section outside that scope returns nothing rather than someone else's requests. The control is hidden for tenants that do not use sections at all.

Routing by Request Type (improvement vs repair)

On the Business plan, each Request workflow step can be limited to specific request types. Open Company Settings → Workflows → Requests, expand a step and tick the types under 'Applies to request types'. Typical setup: an 'Improvement approval' step restricted to the Improvement type, routed to the Target Location Manager — the zone's production manager, set on each location via its 'Manager / department head' field — plus a 'Repair approval' step for the other types routed to your maintenance manager role. Each request then follows only the approval chain of its own type; a step with no types ticked keeps applying to every request. The one-click preset 'Route by request type (improvement vs repair)' sets this up for you.

Auto-approve Emergency Requests

Open Company Settings → Workflows → Requests and turn on 'Auto-approve emergency requests'. When enabled, any request flagged as Emergency skips the approval workflow and a work order is created immediately. When disabled (the default), emergency requests follow the normal approval routing. Every auto-approval is recorded in the request history for traceability.

Seeing who approved or rejected

Once a request is approved or rejected, a banner at the top of the request shows who made the decision, when, and the rejection reason. This helps when several managers or maintenance planners can review requests. The same information appears in the request PDF and in the Activity tab.