Help center

Sign in with Google to open the setup screen. Name your organization. ApprovalRail creates a General team and makes you its owner and manager.

Go to People and select Invite People. Enter each email address. Choose a role: member, manager, admin, or owner. You can add a message before you send the invites.

Recipients get a 7-day link. Accepted invites count toward your plan limit.

Visit the Billing page (owners and admins only).

Use the billing toggle above the plans. Annual billing saves about 17%. Stripe prorates the charge when you change plans.

Go to Templates → New Template.

Name it PTO Request and choose the “pto” type. Add a required date-range field, a required number field for days, and a textarea for the reason.

Set approvers to “Manager of the selected team” and save the template. Your team can then submit requests from the Requests page.

Open the template editor to add fields. Supported types are text, textarea, number, date, date-range, select (with options), email, url, checkbox, and file.

Use the layout controls to arrange fields in rows and columns. Changes apply immediately to new requests.

Go to Requests → New Request.

Choose a team you belong to and a template. Fill in the fields and submit the request.

You receive email updates when approvers respond. Open the request to see its full activity history.

Choose a team when you create a request. ApprovalRail applies the template's approver rules when you submit it:

The “manager” rule selects all isManager members of that team. “specific_user” selects the named person. “team_manager” selects the managers of another team.

ApprovalRail creates all pending approvals in parallel. Everyone must approve the request for it to pass. A single rejection marks it rejected.

Managers and approvers see pending items at /approvals.

Open a request to review its original fields, comments, and previous decisions.

You can add a comment before you choose Approve or Reject. ApprovalRail updates the request's status immediately and notifies the requester.

Open a request to see when it was created, its comments and approvals, and each status change.

Owners and admins can check the organization's audit records at /audit.

Records are kept for 30 days on Free, 1 year on Plus, and without a time limit on Advanced. A scheduled job soft-deletes older records on Free and Plus.

Leave a comment on any request. Type @name to mention someone. They receive an email if their notification settings allow it. Comments stay in the request's audit record.

Read the webhook documentation for setup steps, event types, and signature verification.

Native two-way sync is not available. On Advanced, use the request_status_updated webhook event and check that data.request.status is approved. Your integration can then create a Linear issue. The approval_status_updated event records one approver's decision; it does not mean that the full request is approved.