10 Best Approval Workflow Software For Project Managers In 2023

Wrike is a work management platform that lets you create automated approval workflows in a no-code environment.

Why I picked Wrike: You can eliminate time wasted chasing approvals with Wrike’s advanced customization capabilities and enable your team to create more high-quality work every day.

Wrike offers a user-friendly experience with advanced customization capabilities. For example, you can organize, see, and manage project timelines using Kanban boards, drag-and-drop Gantt charts, and detailed dashboards. Additionally, you have access to visual proofing, which allows your approvers to comment and interact with your team during the approval process.

Proofing is available in the Business Plus and Enterprise plans. If you are an approver, you will receive all your pending approval notifications in your Wrike Inbox, or you can add a widget to your dashboard to show approvals.

Wrike Standout Features & Integrations

Features include time tracking, project portfolio management, pre-built templates, custom request forms, interactive Gantt charts, visual proofing, workflow automations, and dashboards.

Integrations include native pre-built integrations with more than 400 popular platforms, including Microsoft, Google, and Dropbox, along with sales and marketing software from Salesforce and Marketo.

Ziflow is a review and approval workflow solution used by creative teams everywhere. It streamlines the feedback and approval process through its support for almost any media type, rich discussion threads, and automated workflows.

Why I picked Ziflow: Instead of sorting through feedback and chasing approvals, you can use Ziflow to automate your approval process. Likewise, you can give your creative team instant visibility on each project, asset, and individual stakeholder. The platform's customizable and automated workflows, along with tracking, make sure everyone stays on task to get projects done on time.

Ziflow Standout Features & Integrations

Features include collaborative discussions, annotations, comments, version comparison, intuitive sign-off on collateral, multi-stage approvals, and approval tracking.

Integrations include Adobe Creative Suite, Dropbox, Slack, Basecamp, and more right out of the box. Also, they have an integration platform called Ziflow connect, with which you can connect it to 1000+ more apps.

Kissflow is a low-code/no-code work management platform enabling businesses to easily design and build applications and workflow processes. The workflow management module is equipped with a visual user interface, a suite of task management tools, and an extensive gallery of templates to help you start creating your custom workflows and apps.

Why I picked Kissflow: the platform's workflow and automation features are designed to boost your team's productivity and efficiency in tackling tasks and projects. It is easy to use, regardless of your coding skills, as it doesn't require you to write even a line of code to create workflows quickly. The software uses a visual form and workflow designer to help you design and build automated workflows.

Kissflow Workflow can be leveraged to streamline multiple approval steps and reduce the output and execution time, thanks to its built-in approval management system. The approval workflows can be broken down into five easy steps: design the visual form, build the workflow, set the parameters (rules and exceptions), choose the team members to be added, perform the analysis, and make adjustments when necessary.

Kissflow Standout Features & Integrations

Features include Kissflow's approval management system that creates a unified view, giving project managers access to a centralized console that contains all items that need immediate action and approval. Users can implement role-based access by defining user roles and responsibilities and granting access permissions to key actions and steps. Project managers can also design and create workflows with multiple approval steps using a no-code drag-and-drop function. In addition, Kissflow Workflow offers algorithmic task assignments, automated workflow routing, reporting capabilities, contextual collaboration, and third-party integrations.

Integrations include Google Workspace (Gmail, Google Docs, etc.), and an API is available to build additional integrations.

Jotform Enterprise provides a powerful, easy-to-use data collection process for businesses looking to optimize their workflow management processes. With Jotform, businesses will have access to offline forms, surveys for product feedback and reviews, collaboration tools, approvals for automated workflows, and conditional logic for a personalized customer form experience. They specialize in B2B businesses but can be adapted to various customer markets and industries.

Why I picked Jotform Enterprise: It offers a modern online form builder that allows you to organize and manage events, register volunteers, and collect donations from a single unified platform. You can choose from thousands of themes and templates to customize without any design experience or even writing a single line of code. Everything is done through the simple drag-and-drop form builder.

Account admins can leverage multiuser options with admin and user-level features for the entire team. It enables single sign-on (SSO) integration, which enables project managers and team leaders to easily manage team members/users through their existing SSO provider when necessary.

Jotform Enterprise is fully capable of automating and streamlining approval workflows for project managers and team leaders with its powerful online forms. Users can easily set up their workflow using the platform’s drag-and-drop interface. They can then track approvals through various tools, including email, mobile apps, and via built-in applications. Moreover, Jotform also has unique features like the e-signature widget, which stakeholders can use to approve forms with minimal effort.

Jotform Enterprise Standout Features & Integrations

Features include workflow automations, conditional logic, e-sign documents with automated signing orders, webhooks, API, and helpful ways to integrate feedback into your workflow.

Integrations include Box, OneDrive, Airtable, Google Drive, PayPal Business, Google Sheets, Google Calendar, Slack, HubSpot, monday.com, and other apps.

Hub Planner is an online scheduling and resource management tool that can help businesses with planning and project management.

Why I picked Hub Planner: Its customizable approval workflow system. You can set up your own approval process and easily manage time off requests from your employees. The tool also allows employees to request time off directly through the system, which saves time and ensures that all requests are tracked in one place.

Hub Planner also has detailed reporting capabilities. You can generate custom reports on a wide range of metrics, such as resource utilization, team performance, and project profitability. This makes it easy to stay on top of your projects and make data-driven decisions.

Hub Planner Standout Features & Integrations

Features include direct approvals from the dashboard, resource management, PTO planning, timesheets, reporting, skills matching, task management, templates, drag-and-drop scheduler, project budgets, approval flows, and smart scheduler.

Integrations include DIY options via the Hub Planner API and webhooks. Additionally, you can access thousands of apps using a Zapier account.

IntelligenceBank is a digital asset management (DAM) platform that helps you manage digital assets and recently upgraded its online proofing and approvals feature.

Why I picked IntelligenceBank: With this update, it’s possible to collaborate on marketing campaigns and content reviews. As you automate your approvals, create brand checklists to make sure that the person responsible for the review knows the steps required from a compliance standpoint. Have a section you want to highlight? You can draw on top of the content so you make sure no one misses the spot you are discussing.

IntelligenceBank Standout Features & Integrations

Features include an online brand portal, creative templates, approval history, approval status list, approval time tracking, file proofing with audit trails, comments, annotations, and file management using tags.

Integrations. Intelligencebank has connectors built to integrate with Adobe Creative Cloud, Salesforce, Google Workspace, Drupal, and more.

Filestage is a GDPR-compliant review and approval platform used by marketing teams, agencies, and production companies around the world. Why? Probably because it takes minutes for you to set up approval workflows, whether that's manually or using one of the available templates.

Why I picked Filestage: This tool centralizes your approval workflow into a single dashboard. From there, you can see every review step, file format, version, and reviewer in your project, with status indicators to show who’s approved what. Additionally, the platform allows you to save each comment, so you can go back and check who said what.

But it’s not until you start using the platform that the time-saving tricks really reveal themselves. Tap on videos instead of writing time codes in your comments. Compare versions side by side to provide more accurate feedback. Automatically share content with your external reviewers once it’s been approved by your internal team.

Filestage Standout Features & Integrations

Features include an approval progress tracker, annotations, unlimited file sharing, feedback in context, one-click approvals, and version history.

Integrations include native connections with Slack, Microsoft Teams, Adobe Creative Cloud, and Asana – plus thousands more apps through their integration partners, like Pabbly.

You can also invite an unlimited number of reviewers and external uploaders to your account for free.

Admation is an ad agency project management and approval software that helps you manage projects from start to finish.

Why I picked Admation: It is a tool that focuses on creative projects. This software can handle routine approvals where you need one person to give a yes or no answer, and complex approvals that require four levels of approvals. Program your pathways and let the approval process run on its own!

The user interface is not the friendliest but it has the tools you need to handle approvals. Attach documents, add comments to a revision, and see approval paths in just a couple of clicks.

If you need a tool where your content lives, helps with compliance and acts as a collaboration tool between stakeholders in your digital marketing projects, try Admation.

Admation Standout Features & Integrations

Features include timesheets, scheduling, approval checklists, online proofing, annotations, brand asset management, marketing calendars, and revisions with version comparison.

Integrations include Box.com, Amazon, AWS Storage, and Google Drive.

Tallyfy is a workflow, task, and process automation software that helps you register and automate processes without the need to code or diagram complicated flowcharts.

Why I picked Tallyfy: With this software, you can create templates based on your previous work and they call it blueprints. These blueprints outline the steps needed for that process, from the input information required from the user to the approval decision-making trees.

Tallyfy can work for you if you have a very well-understood logic behind your process and little variation. Not the friendliest tool to look at, but it can definitely help you automate workflows for your projects.

Tallyfy Standout Features & Integrations

Features include live tracking of all approvals in the pipeline, approval automation, responsive phone and tablet versions of the software, and SSO security included in any plan, which is rare in software of this kind.

Integrations include native connections with Slack, Google Workspace and Outlook, a Zapier connector that you can use to connect to thousands of additional apps, and offers a REST API and webhooks.

Gain is an approval software focused on marketing approvals and making the approvers and your team collaborate in one place.

Why I picked Gain: You can load content, send it for approval, receive comments on it, and get that green light you’ve been waiting for in the same platform. Your email inbox will thank you for it as it significantly reduces interactions through those platforms.

Gain has the option to define single approval workflows or complex approvals that require 2 or 3 rounds of approvals. Once you create a workflow for your type of content, whether financial management, purchasing, or digital marketing, you can save it as a template.

Ready to send your work? Click on ‘send to approve’ and select the workflow that better suits your needs.

Gain Standout Features & Integrations

Features include flexible approval workflows that can include as many rounds of approvals as you need and easy login for your approvers using their email in any device. This is great because they don't need to remember their password. Finally, I really like that they have private approval queues for each user, meaning I only see what I need to approve and if new items come in, they are automatically added at the end of my queue.

Integrations include Canva and accepts uploads and imports from apps such as Google Drive, Box, Illustrator, Photoshop, Microsoft Office, and more.