11 Best Ways to Speed Up Capital Approval Workflows
Slow capital approvals don't just frustrate project managers—they cost money. Delayed projects mean extended building problems, missed market windows, and higher construction costs as inflation erodes budgets. Yet many organizations accept approval timelines of weeks or months as normal. These eleven strategies help you accelerate approvals while maintaining appropriate governance.
Why Capital Approvals Slow Down
Before fixing the problem, understand what causes it:
- Too many approval levels: Every additional approver adds days or weeks
- Unclear requirements: Approvers request information that should have been included upfront
- Bottleneck individuals: Key approvers with overflowing queues
- Paper-based processes: Physical routing and signature gathering
- Lack of urgency: No visibility into how long approvals take
- Fear of accountability: Approvers hesitant to sign off
Speed and governance aren't inherently opposed. Poor processes slow things down, not proper oversight.
11 Ways to Accelerate Approvals
1. Right-Size Approval Thresholds
Most organizations require the same approval process for a $5,000 repair and a $500,000 renovation. That's not governance—it's waste.
How to implement:
- Analyze your capital spending patterns by dollar amount
- Set threshold tiers (e.g., under $10K, $10-50K, $50-250K, $250K+)
- Assign appropriate approval levels to each tier
- Allow lower thresholds to proceed with fewer approvals
- Reserve executive involvement for truly significant decisions
Example threshold structure:
- Under $10,000: Property manager approval only
- $10,000-50,000: Regional director
- $50,000-250,000: VP of operations
- Over $250,000: Executive committee
Raising thresholds isn't reducing oversight—it's focusing oversight where it matters.
2. Require Complete Submissions
Incomplete requests create approval ping-pong. The request goes up, comes back with questions, gets revised, goes up again. Each cycle adds days.
What to require upfront:
- Clear scope description with deliverables
- Detailed cost estimate with backup
- Business justification tied to strategic priorities
- Timeline with key milestones
- Risk assessment for significant projects
- Alternatives considered and why this approach was selected
How to enforce completeness:
- Create submission checklists for each project type
- Build intake forms that require all fields
- Return incomplete submissions immediately rather than routing them
- Track rejection rates and address common gaps
Complete submissions get approved faster than incomplete ones—often 50% faster.
3. Implement Parallel Approvals Where Possible
Sequential approval chains multiply delay. If five people must approve in sequence and each takes three days, that's three weeks minimum—even if no one asks questions.
Where parallel works:
- Cross-functional reviews (finance, operations, legal can often review simultaneously)
- Multiple stakeholder sign-offs at the same level
- Technical and business reviews
Where sequential is necessary:
- Lower levels validating before escalation
- Conditional approvals (A must approve before B's input matters)
- Legal or compliance reviews that may change the request
Identify which approvals in your chain can run in parallel and restructure accordingly.
4. Set and Enforce Response Time Expectations
Without deadlines, approvals expand to fill available time. Busy approvers defer non-urgent requests indefinitely.
How to implement:
- Define expected response times by tier (e.g., 48 hours for routine, 5 days for complex)
- Build automatic reminders into your workflow
- Escalate after deadline with visibility to leadership
- Track actual approval times and review with approvers
- Include approval timeliness in performance conversations
Make it work:
- Get executive sponsorship for response time expectations
- Apply expectations consistently—no exceptions for senior people
- Provide context so approvers understand urgency
- Remove approvers from workflows if they consistently bottleneck
People respond when expectations are clear and enforced.
5. Provide Approvers What They Need to Decide
Approvers slow down when they don't have information needed to make confident decisions. Give them everything upfront.
What approvers typically need:
- Executive summary they can read in 2 minutes
- Clear cost breakdown and funding source
- Business case with expected benefits
- Comparison to alternatives
- Risk assessment and mitigation
- Recommendation with supporting rationale
Format for speed:
- Lead with the recommendation and ask
- Structure for scanning, not reading
- Highlight what's different or unusual
- Anticipate and answer likely questions
- Attach detailed backup rather than including it in main document
Make the approval decision easy, and approvers will act quickly.
6. Automate Routing and Notifications
Manual routing—forwarding emails, tracking spreadsheets, chasing signatures—creates delay and drops requests.
What to automate:
- Routing based on dollar amount, project type, or property
- Notifications when requests arrive and when they're overdue
- Escalations when deadlines pass
- Status updates to requesters
- Approval confirmations and next-step triggers
Technology options:
- Purpose-built CapEx management software
- Workflow automation tools (ServiceNow, Monday, etc.)
- Custom-built approval workflows in existing systems
- Even simple email automation beats manual routing
Automation removes human delay from the mechanical parts of approval.
7. Establish Pre-Approved Categories
Some capital needs are predictable and recurring. Pre-approving categories reduces per-project approval burden.
Candidates for pre-approval:
- Annual HVAC maintenance and replacements under threshold
- Life safety equipment replacements
- Standard unit renovation packages
- Recurring capital at budgeted amounts
- Emergency repairs under defined limits
How pre-approval works:
- Define eligible categories and conditions
- Set annual budget limits for pre-approved work
- Require notification (not approval) when work proceeds
- Track spend against pre-approved budgets
- Review and adjust categories annually
Pre-approval isn't bypassing governance—it's governance applied at the category level rather than the transaction level.
8. Create Fast-Track Paths for Urgent Needs
Some projects can't wait for normal timelines. Define expedited paths rather than forcing workarounds.
When fast-track applies:
- Safety hazards requiring immediate action
- Regulatory compliance deadlines
- Opportunities with expiring windows
- Damage requiring immediate remediation
How to structure:
- Define qualifying criteria for expedited approval
- Identify who can authorize fast-track processing
- Set shorter (but realistic) timeline expectations
- Require post-hoc documentation for emergency approvals
- Track fast-track usage to prevent abuse
Having a defined fast-track prevents gaming the system with false urgency.
9. Delegate Appropriately
Centralized approval often means approval by people far from the situation who must spend time getting context. Delegation pushes decisions to those with relevant knowledge.
Delegation principles:
- Push decisions to the lowest level with appropriate context and judgment
- Set clear boundaries on delegated authority
- Require escalation for exceptions, not routine approvals
- Hold delegates accountable for outcomes
- Review delegated decisions periodically
Common delegation structure:
- Property managers: Routine maintenance and minor capital
- Regional directors: Property-level improvements within budget
- VPs: Portfolio initiatives and significant investments
- Executives: Strategic capital and major commitments
Delegation speeds approvals and develops decision-making capability throughout the organization.
10. Track and Report Approval Metrics
What gets measured gets managed. Most organizations don't track how long approvals actually take.
Metrics to track:
- Average approval time by tier and type
- Approval time distribution (median, 90th percentile)
- Rejection and revision rates
- Time by approval stage (where do requests stall?)
- Approver-specific performance
How to use the data:
- Identify and address systemic bottlenecks
- Have specific conversations with slow approvers
- Recognize and reinforce efficient approvers
- Set improvement targets based on baseline data
- Report to leadership on approval efficiency
You can't improve what you don't measure.
11. Review and Simplify Regularly
Approval processes accumulate complexity over time. Each incident adds a new requirement, but nothing gets removed.
Annual review questions:
- Which approval steps actually catch problems?
- What thresholds make sense given current spending patterns?
- Which requirements are legacy from past issues?
- Where do requests most commonly stall?
- What feedback do approvers and requesters have?
Simplification approaches:
- Remove approval steps that rarely reject or modify requests
- Raise thresholds to match actual risk levels
- Consolidate similar approval paths
- Eliminate redundant documentation requirements
- Retire processes designed for old organizational structures
Active simplification prevents approval bureaucracy from growing indefinitely.
Common Approval Workflow Mistakes
Adding approvers after problems: One bad project doesn't mean every project needs more oversight. Address the specific failure, not the general process.
Requiring approval from unavailable people: Key approvers on extended travel or leave create predictable bottlenecks. Build in delegation.
Treating all projects the same: A roof replacement and a strategic renovation require different approval approaches. One size doesn't fit.
No visibility into status: Requesters who can't see where their request sits become frustrated and distracting. Provide transparency.
Approvers who only review, never decide: If approvers consistently defer decisions to others, they're not approvers—they're reviewers. Clarify roles.
Frequently Asked Questions
How fast should capital approvals be?
For routine capital within budget, aim for 3-5 business days total. Complex or above-threshold projects might take 2-3 weeks. Anything over 30 days indicates process problems. Track your baseline and set improvement targets.
Won't faster approvals lead to worse decisions?
Not if you maintain good information requirements. Speed comes from removing unnecessary steps and delays, not from reducing due diligence. Well-designed processes are both fast and thorough.
How do we get executives to approve faster?
Set clear expectations with executive sponsorship. Provide complete information so decisions are easy. Use consent-based approaches where lack of response equals approval after deadline. Make approval time visible.
Should we implement approval software?
For organizations with significant capital volume, purpose-built software provides automation, tracking, and visibility that spreadsheets can't match. Evaluate CapEx management solutions against your specific workflow needs.
Key Takeaways
- Right-size approval thresholds to project significance
- Require complete submissions to avoid back-and-forth
- Use parallel approvals where approvers are independent
- Set and enforce response time expectations
- Give approvers what they need to decide quickly
- Automate routing, notifications, and escalations
- Pre-approve predictable capital categories
- Create fast-track paths for genuine urgency
- Delegate to the appropriate level
- Track approval metrics and address bottlenecks
- Review and simplify processes regularly
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