Approval Workflow: Build One Free in Microsoft 365 or Google

An approval workflow is the path a request takes from the person who asks to the person who decides, with the decision recorded and the next step triggered. You can build one for free with tools you may already have: SharePoint list approvals, a Power Automate flow with the Start and wait for an approval action, or a Google Form feeding a shared Sheet. The method is the same everywhere: capture the request, route it, decide, record, act. The free way holds until requests cross several apps or need rules about who approves what.

What every approval workflow needs

Before opening any tool, write down five things. Who asks, and through what form? Who decides, and is it one person or several? What happens on yes, and what happens on no? Where does the decision live afterward, so you can answer who approved this, and when six months later? Most homemade approvals fail on the last two. The request gets a thumbs-up in chat. Nobody updates the record. The next step depends on someone's memory.

Keep the first version boring. One request type, one approver, one outcome on each side. Add a second approver or a spending limit only after the simple path has run for a few weeks without anyone going around it. A process people skip is worse than none, because the record now lies.

SharePoint approval workflow: switch it on for any list

If your team already works in Microsoft 365, the fastest route needs no flow at all. Microsoft calls these modern approvals: you enable them on a list or library, and each item gets an approval status and a Request approval command ^[1]. Two built-in list templates, Content scheduler with approvals and Travel requests with approvals, come with them already set up.

1. Open the list or library, go to the Integrate dropdown in the command bar and select Configure Approvals.
2. Turn on Enable Approvals and select Apply. You can also set default approvers and decide whether people with lower permissions may overwrite them.
3. Select an item or file and choose Request approval from its contextual menu.
4. Enter one or more approvers and add details. By default, one approver's yes grants the request; a toggle requires a response from all of them.
5. Approvers select Approve or Reject in the list's Approval details, or in the Approvals app in Microsoft Teams.

Read the limits before you rely on it. Editing an item or file cancels an approval in progress, so files open view-only in the web apps while one runs. An approver who cannot see the item does not get access automatically; you share it by hand. The list columns show only the latest activity, and the full history sits in the Teams Approvals app. Enabling approvals also turns off Lists sync for that list.

A Power Automate approval workflow that acts on the answer

SharePoint's switch records a decision. It does nothing with it. For that you need a flow. The Start and wait for an approval action sends the request, pauses the flow until approvers respond, then continues ^[2]. Microsoft says any license that includes Power Automate with standard connectors is enough, and lists Office 365 among those licenses. Approvers answer from an Outlook email, a Teams card or the Power Automate action center.

Microsoft's own tutorial starts from a SharePoint list, but any trigger can start the flow ^[3]:

1. Create an automated cloud flow with the trigger that starts a request, such as a new item in a SharePoint list or a new Microsoft Forms response.
2. Add an action, type approval, and under Standard approvals select Start and wait for an approval.
3. Pick the Approval type, enter a Title, put the approver's email in Assigned to, and describe the request in Details using fields from the trigger.
4. Below it, add a Condition: the Approval response value, is equal to, Approve.
5. In the yes branch, email the requester and update the record. In the no branch, send the rejection.

The approval type is your decision rule. Everyone must approve waits for every approver, or stops at the first rejection. First to respond finishes on any one answer. Sequential approval asks approvers one at a time, in order, which covers the classic manager-then-finance chain. Custom Responses lets you define the options yourself, such as Approve, Reject and Needs info, and comes in two types: wait for all responses, or wait for one. Pick the type first. Everything else follows from it.

A Google Forms approval workflow with a linked Sheet

Google Forms has no approve button of its own. The free Google way is a form for the request and a shared spreadsheet for the decision. It is a manual approval workflow, but it leaves a clean record. Link the form to a sheet so every request lands as a row:

1. Open the form in Google Forms, click Responses, then Summary.
2. At the top right, click More, then Select destination for responses.
3. Choose Create a new spreadsheet, or select an existing one, and click Create or Select.
4. In the sheet, add columns to the right of the responses: Status, Approver, Decided on, Note.
5. Share the sheet with approvers and filter on an empty Status to see what is waiting.

One detail from Google's help matters here. Form collaborators get access to a new response sheet automatically, but later permission changes on the form do not carry over; you update the form and the sheet separately. And nothing in this setup tells an approver that a row arrived, or tells the requester the answer. Someone has to look.

For documents rather than requests, Google Drive has real approvals. Approvers see a banner in Docs, Sheets or Slides with Approve and Reject, the file can be locked during review, and Drive search can list files awaiting your approval ^[4]. The catch is the account. Google says the feature is only for Enterprise and Google Workspace for Education Plus accounts, not personal Gmail or standard Workspace accounts.

Example: a purchase request with a spending limit

Picture a ten-person office. Anyone can ask to buy equipment through a form. Requests go to the office manager, and purchases above a set amount also need the owner. In Power Automate this is one flow. The form response triggers it, a Condition checks the amount, small requests go to Start and wait for an approval with the manager assigned, and large ones use a Sequential approval with the manager first and the owner second.

Each branch ends the same way: email the requester and write the outcome back to the list. In the Google version, the owner filters the sheet on the amount and checks every row above the limit by hand. It works. It also depends on two people remembering to open a spreadsheet, which is the habit an approval workflow is meant to replace. That gap is the first sign of the threshold.

Where the free approval workflow stops

The built-in ways hold up while three things stay true: everyone works in one suite, requests are few enough for a person to scan daily, and the action after approval stays inside that suite. They break when the request comes from one app, the approver lives in Slack, and the result must land in an accounting tool or a store. Google's file approvals need Enterprise accounts. SharePoint's columns keep only the latest decision.

At that point an automation platform carries the request across apps, pauses for a person, and continues on the answer. n8n has steps built for this: its Send and Wait nodes pause a workflow until someone responds, and its human approval of AI actions gates risky steps the same way. In Make (Make.com), the review-queue pattern uses one scenario to queue requests and a second to act only on approved ones. Latenode can auto-approve clear cases and send edge cases to a person.

If approvals are one step of a bigger process, our guide to business process automation shows how to map the whole thing first. For supplier bills, see invoice automation software for the tools that pair approvals with invoice handling.

The bottom line

An approval workflow has five parts: request, route, decision, record, action. In Microsoft 365, start with SharePoint's list approvals, then move to a Power Automate flow once the answer must trigger something. On Google, a form plus a shared sheet gives a clean record without automation, and Drive approvals cover documents on Enterprise accounts. Add an automation platform when requests cross apps or need rules nobody should check by hand.