Payroll Approval Workflow: Routing Every Approval to the Right Manager

The HR manager at a dealership group with several rooftops submits a pay change for a technician at the north store. Within minutes, every general manager in the company has it in their inbox. Three of them reply some version of “not my person.” One approves it anyway, just to clear the queue. The north store’s GM, the only one who should have signed off, is on the lot and hasn’t looked yet. That’s a payroll approval workflow doing exactly what it was set up to do, which is the problem.

Multi-location employers run into versions of this constantly. Approvals that go to everyone. Approvals that go to one person in the corporate office. Approvals tied to a manager who left in March. We hear about it from dealerships, home health agencies, hotels and schools, and the fix is almost always in how the routing was set up, not in how hard people are working.

Last updated: October 23, 2026

Key takeaways

• Route approvals by position and location, not by a person’s name, so turnover doesn’t break them.
• Every approval step needs a backup, or one vacation stalls new hires and pay changes.
• Managers should be able to approve for their own people without seeing or editing everything.

Why the Payroll Approval Workflow Breaks at Multiple Locations

Most approval setups start simple. One company, one HR person, one owner. Everything routes to them because they’re the only ones who could approve it anyway. Then the business adds a second store, a third property, a new region. The routing never gets rebuilt. It just gets patched.

Here’s what the patches look like after a few years.

Everything lands on one central admin

At a home health agency we talked with, the owner enters a new hire, finishes their part, and expects the next task to move along. It doesn’t. Every task routes to the one HR person instead. When she takes a vacation, she ends up finishing onboarding tasks remotely, because otherwise nothing moves.

Approvals go to all managers instead of the right one

That’s the dealership story above. Status-change forms couldn’t be pointed at the GM of a specific store, so they went to every GM. Sales departments make it messier, since a desk manager and a general sales manager may both need to weigh in before the GM does.

Workflows tied to a named person

Another dealership told us their old workflows required a specific person at each step. Every time someone was promoted, transferred or quit, an admin had to find every loop that person was in and update it by hand. They wanted the step controlled by role instead. Fair ask.

The owner who approves every timecard

This one surprises people. At one company, the CEO personally approved every employee’s timecard. Why? Giving managers approval meant giving them edit rights too, and he wasn’t comfortable with that. So the most expensive person in the building became the payroll bottleneck. A dealership with hundreds of employees had the opposite issue: several sales managers needed to update time for salespeople who didn’t report to them directly, and HR had to grant that access one person at a time.

Onboarding tasks that ignore location

A professional services firm wanted day-one tasks, like the operations director handing over keys, assigned to a different person depending on which office the new hire joined. Without location-based assignment, those tasks either go to the wrong person or get handled through email.

What Misrouted Approvals Cost You

The obvious cost is time. Approvers sort through requests that aren’t theirs. HR chases the ones that are stuck. But the bigger costs show up in payroll.

Unapproved timecards don’t erase the hours behind them. The Department of Labor’s Fact Sheet #22 on hours worked says work not requested but suffered or permitted is work time the employer must pay for. A slow approval doesn’t change what you owe. It just raises the odds that payroll goes out with something missing, and that a correction check follows.

Records matter too. Under the FLSA, employers must keep hours worked each day and each workweek, and the DOL’s recordkeeping fact sheet says time cards and other records that wages are based on should be kept for two years. When a manager who shouldn’t have access edits a timecard, or a wrong GM approves a pay change, you’ve weakened the record you’d rely on in a wage dispute.

And then there’s control. An approval chain is also a check on who can change pay. If anyone can approve anything, it’s not really an approval. Our piece on segregation of duties in payroll goes deeper on that side of it.

How to Set Up Approval Routing That Survives Turnover

You don’t need a perfect org chart to fix routing. You need a few rules, applied consistently.

Approve by position, not by name. Set each step to a role like “General Manager” or “Director of Nursing,” then let the system find whoever holds that role at the employee’s location. When someone leaves, you fill the position and the routing keeps working. Nobody has to hunt through workflows.

Route by location and reporting line. A pay change for someone at the north store should go to the north store’s manager first. Use the employee’s own primary manager where your manager assignments are clean, and position-based routing where they aren’t.

Keep the chain short, and tier it. Most requests need one or two steps. A common pattern is the direct manager, then the location GM, then HR or the CFO for anything above a threshold. Each extra step adds a day. Add steps where risk is real, like pay increases or terminations, not by default.

Name a backup for every step. Vacations, sick days and resignations are certain. Every approver should have a fallback, and someone should get alerted when a step has no available approver at all.

Separate approving from seeing everything. A shift lead who signs off on timecards for six people doesn’t need access to the whole store’s pay rates. Scope each manager to their department or their own employees, and give the lightest access level that lets them do the job.

Plan for cross-reporting. In sales floors, kitchens and nursing units, people often work for more than one supervisor. Decide up front who approves time for shared employees, and give secondary managers the access they need on purpose, not one request at a time. Our guide to employees who work in multiple departments walks through supervisors, time rules and pay rates for shared staff.

Test it with real requests. Before you go live, submit a few test changes for employees at different locations: a raise at one store, a termination at another, a new hire whose manager is out. Watch where each one lands. If a request shows up in the wrong inbox, or in five inboxes, fix the rule now. It’s much easier than explaining a missed pay change to an employee on payday.

Review routing when people move. Add a step to your promotion, transfer and termination checklist: who did this person approve for, and who takes that over?

If managers are reluctant to own approvals, give them the tools first. Our post on giving frontline managers the HR tools they need covers how to get buy-in.

How Netchex Routes Approvals Across Locations

We built Onboarding & Workflows to replace approvals chased by email or tracked in spreadsheets. You define an approval path once, by position, location or another business rule, and every matching request routes on its own. No manual forwarding.

Approver groups give you three ways to route. Relationship-based approvers follow the employee’s primary, secondary or skip-level manager. Position-based approvers, like “General Manager” or “CFO,” stay consistent across locations no matter who holds the role. Named approvers cover the cases where it really should be one specific person. Groups support sequential, tiered approval, so a change can go from the department manager to the GM to HR in order. You can also set approval paths per company, which keeps local ownership in place across a multi-entity group.

Backups are built in. Fallback approvers are assigned automatically when the original approver is out on PTO or has a status change, so tasks don’t get stuck. Org admins can be alerted when an approver group has no available user. Onboarding tasks can be assigned to the employee, a manager, a specific person or a position, and targeted by position or department.

Pay changes, position changes and terminations run through the same engine. Once approved, the change applies on its effective date to the employee’s profile, timecard and payroll, with a full audit trail of who approved, declined or edited what. Approvers sign electronically, and a decline needs a reason. Managers see the requests for employees they manage in their own Assigned to Me queue, while admins see across their company or the whole organization.

Manager access is configurable, too. We offer predefined manager roles from light to heavy access, plus custom, and each manager can be scoped to a division, business unit, department or a specific list of employees. When payroll time comes, OneScreen Payroll shows unapproved timecards and missing punches across every location in one place, and you can notify the responsible manager right from the dashboard.

See how the pieces fit on our onboarding and workflows software page.

Frequently Asked Questions

This guide reflects publicly available product information and independent reviewer data (G2, Capterra, Trustpilot, Yelp, Better Business Bureau, Reddit, Software Advice, GetApp) as of 2026. Feature availability and pricing may vary by plan. Contact each provider for current details.

Disclaimer: Any product roadmap or future plans provided herein are for informational purposes only. They do not represent a commitment to deliver any material, code, feature, or functionality. Plans may change without notification. The development, release and timing of any features or functionality described remain at the sole discretion of Netchex, its affiliates, and partners. Netchex does not give legal, tax, or accounting advice. You are responsible for ensuring your use of Netchex product meets your individual business and compliance requirements.

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