How an approval flow picks approvers when a submission arrives

The exact order CLVR uses at submission time to find the right flow and either auto-approve or assign the first reviewers, plus why an approver may not be notified and why a submission can clear with no review.

When an employee uploads an expense report or buys a benefit, CLVR runs a fixed lookup to find the matching approval flow and then either approves the submission straight away or assigns the first reviewers. Nothing here is random: the same rules run every time, so the result is predictable once you know the order. This article traces that logic step by step, then covers the two questions it most often raises, why an expected reviewer was not notified, and why a submission cleared with no review.

Finding the flow

CLVR first works out which flow applies, and it checks the most specific mapping first.

For an uploaded expense report:

• A flow mapped to that exact benefit category is used first.
• If the category has no flow of its own, the default upload-expense flow is used (the mapping with no specific category attached).

For a benefit purchase, CLVR uses the flow mapped to that benefit.

If a flow is found, it runs. If none is mapped, the submission falls back to your standard approvers (see Troubleshooting below).

Auto-approve and empty flows

Once a flow is found, CLVR checks how it is set up:

• If the flow's Behavior is Auto approve, or
• If the flow has no groups attached (no steps),

then the submission is marked Approved immediately, with a completion date recorded. For uploaded expenses this also runs the normal post-approval steps, so the employee sees the result within seconds.

Walking the steps in order

If the flow is an Approval process with one or more groups, CLVR walks the groups in the order you saved them. For each step it resolves the group to real people:

• Manager: the submitting employee's manager.
• HR, Salary, and Finance: the people you assigned to those groups under Group Members.

CLVR assigns the first step that resolves to at least one person as the reviewers and stops there. Later steps come into play only after that first set finishes its review, not at submission time.

What assigned reviewers receive

When a step is assigned, each reviewer gets:

• An in-app notification, Please review, linking straight to the submission.
• An email letting them know they were added as an approver, with a link to open the review.

The employee who submitted sees who will review their report on the final upload step and can track it from My Benefits.

When an approver is not notified or assigned

When someone expects to review a submission but never hears about it, the cause is almost always one of a few configuration states: the reviewer belongs to a later step that has not started yet, their group has no members, or an employee has no manager set.

Reviewers are only assigned to the active step

CLVR assigns reviewers to the first step whose group resolves to at least one person, and only that step. Later steps (for example a Finance step after Manager) get no reviewer rows and no notifications until the flow reaches them. So if a Finance reviewer is wondering why nothing landed in their inbox, the flow is usually still waiting on an earlier step. That is expected, not a fault.

Use the expense status preview

Open any pending expense report or benefit purchase and find the Expense status card. Each step shows the group name (Manager, HR, Salary, or Finance) and its reviewers. For the active step these are the assigned reviewers; for steps that have not started yet, CLVR previews who is expected based on current group membership and manager data. Hover a step to see a short tooltip, such as "Anna Svensson will review this step when it is their turn." If a step shows no names at all, that group has nobody to resolve to, which is the most common reason a reviewer is never notified.

A whole group has no members

If a flow step points at a group that has no members, that step resolves to nobody, so it is skipped and the flow moves on. To fix it, go to Approval Settings, open the Group Members section, find the group's picker (HR, Salary, or Finance), and select the employees who should review for it. The change saves as soon as you select someone. From then on, new submissions that reach that step assign those people.

A Manager step routed to HR instead

The Manager group is resolved per submitting employee, not from a fixed list. For each submission, CLVR looks up that employee's manager from their employee data. If no manager can be found, the step falls back to the HR group members. That is why a Manager step can surprise you: an employee with a missing or incorrect manager value routes to HR, so the expected name in the preview may be an HR reviewer rather than the line manager you had in mind. The fix is to correct the employee's manager data, not the flow. For the full lookup order, see how the Manager approver is determined.

When a submission is auto-approved unexpectedly

When a submission shows Approved the moment it arrives and no one was asked to review it, it is almost always the flow doing exactly what it is configured to do, not a bug. A submission is approved instantly in any of these cases:

• The matched flow's Behavior is set to Auto approve.
• The matched flow is an Approval process but has no groups attached.
• The matched flow is an Approval process with groups, but none of its steps resolve to a real person.
• No flow is mapped to the benefit or category at all, and your standard approvers clear it.

The first three are different ways of telling CLVR "no review needed." The last one is a mapping gap.

• The flow is set to Auto approve. Open the flow and check its Behavior column. If it reads Auto approve, every matching submission is marked Approved instantly and no reviewer is assigned; the groups shown next to it do not gate anything. To require a review, Edit the flow, change Behavior to Approval process, and make sure it has at least one group.
• The flow has no groups. A flow set to Approval process but saved with an empty Groups (in order) field behaves exactly like Auto approve. Open the flow and add at least one group.
• The groups are empty, so no one resolves. A flow can list groups and still auto-approve if none of them resolve to an actual person. HR, Salary, and Finance resolve to whoever you listed under Group Members; Manager resolves to the submitting employee's manager and falls back to HR. Populate the groups in Group Members, and keep at least one person in HR since the Manager step falls back to it.
• No flow is mapped to the item. The submission falls back to your standard approvers, which can look like an unexpected auto-approval. The default text in benefit and category settings tells you what will happen: Default: auto-approved (flow name) for an auto-approve flow, or Default: approved by standard approvers. when nothing is mapped. Map the flow to that benefit or category so your rules take effect.

If the instant approval is intentional, no change is needed: auto-approval is a valid setup for low-risk categories.

Troubleshooting

• The submission was approved with no reviewer. Either the matched flow is set to Auto approve (or has no groups), or none of its steps resolved to a real person. When no step resolves anyone, CLVR approves the submission rather than letting it get stuck with nobody to review it.
• Only some submissions auto-approve. The Manager step resolves per employee. An employee with no manager falls back to HR, and if HR is also empty the submission auto-approves. Check the submitting employee's manager data and your HR members.
• A later reviewer was not notified. Check the Expense status card. If their step has not started, that is expected; reviewers are assigned step by step.
• A step shows no names. That group has no members, or a Manager step found no manager and HR is also empty. Add members in Group Members, or fix the employee's manager data.
• A reviewer was assigned but no email arrived. Outside the live production service, the email is not sent by design. The in-app notification is the reliable signal.
• Someone who used to review no longer is. If that employee was removed from the company, they are also removed from every group, so they are no longer assigned. Add a replacement in Group Members.
• The wrong group reviewed it. Open the flow and check the order under Groups (in order), then confirm the right people are listed under Group Members.