Available for Premier and Enterprise plans.
You can set up an internal approval process for your "offer" type e-signature templates. After setting up an offer to send to a candidate, chosen hiring managers or administrators will need to approve or sign the offer before the candidate is contacted.
The entire approval process is recorded on the candidate’s profile so the team can see which stakeholders need to provide their approval or why a hiring manager rejected the offer details.
Setting up an approval workflow
- Click your user icon in the upper right and select Settings and then Templates from the menu on the left.
- Locate the e-signature templates section and edit or add a template, selecting the type "offer".
- In the Approval workflow section of the template editor, you’ll create a process through which your coworkers will review and approve an offer’s details.
- Click Add Approvers to create one (or more) approval group(s). One person from each group must approve the offer before it can be sent.
- Add users by name or by user type. For example, add ‘Admin’ or ‘Hiring Managers’.
- Click Add more approvers to add more and more groups.
Below are your options when adding users:
- Admin group: any Admin in Workable can approve the offer
- Recruiter group: any Recruiter assigned to the job can approve the offer
- Hiring Managers group: any user who is assigned to the job as a 'Hiring Manager' can approve the offer
- Name: this specific person can approve the offer - they must be an admin or assigned to the job as a 'Hiring Manager'
An approval notification will be sent to each group in succession, i.e. Group 1 must approve before Group 2 is notified, and so on.
In this example, when we're ready to send this offer template to a candidate the Administrators on our account and Alexia are notified and asked to approve.
After any one of the people in the first group approves the offer, the Hiring Managers assigned to the job will then receive a notification to review and approve the offer. Once a Hiring Manager approves the offer it will be sent to the candidate.
Note: If the sender of an offer qualifies as an approver in any approval group, then those groups will approve the offer automatically. The sender inputs all of the offer details and verifies the information when setting up the offer. Since they have already approved the offer during creation, any step where they might have had to approve it is auto-approved.
Adding a company signatory
You can add a signer to the offer letter who will be requested to sign the contract/offer before it’s sent to the candidate. Company signers must be in the job's hiring team as Hiring Managers and above. The [company_signature] variable must be included in your offer document in order to add a signatory.
👉 Learn more about the process here.
Using an approval workflow
While sending an offer e-signature document, if an approval workflow has been set up, then the workflow will appear when you review the details. Confirm the details and click Send offer for approval, which will initiate the approval workflow.
Users in the first group will receive a notification in their Workable Inbox as well as an email. The offer details will appear in the notification/email for the approver to review. They will have an option to approve or reject.
Here, a Workable user has received an Inbox notification with all of the offer details (including things like salary, vacation time, etc.). They can hit the checkmark to approve or the X to reject the details.
If a user rejects the offer, they will be asked to note a reason, and the person who initially set up the offer will be notified. Any necessary updates should be made, and the offer can be set up again.
After 1 person in the first group has approved the offer, the next group is notified, and so on.
As each group provides their approval, the Offer section on the candidate’s profile in Workable will update. The approver from each group will be noted in the offer details with a green checkmark next to their user icon.
After all groups have approved the offer, a link to sign the offer document will be sent to the signer (if there is one setup).
Once the document has been signed, it will be sent to the candidate automatically.
Sending an approval reminder
While an offer is pending approval or pending signature, the current approval group's waiting time is shown next to their name in the Offer section of the candidate's profile. Point to the waiting time to see the exact date and time the approval was requested.
Select Send reminder to notify that group again. Only the group whose turn it currently is receives the reminder — approvers from earlier groups who already signed off, and members of later groups, are not notified. Before sending, a confirmation dialog shows who will receive the reminder and when the last request or reminder was sent, so you can decide whether a nudge makes sense yet.
Note: Once a reminder is sent, an Approval reminder sent label appears next to the waiting time, and the Send reminder button is temporarily disabled. It becomes available again once the page is reloaded — this only prevents sending the same reminder twice in one session, not a required cooling-off period.
The approver receives a new inbox notification (their previous one is archived) along with any other notifications they have configured, such as email, Slack, or push. Links in the original notification remain valid, so nothing breaks if an approver acts on the first message instead.
If the approval group has already approved, or the offer was cancelled or expired since the page was loaded, no reminder is sent — you'll see an error message and the offer details refresh to the current status.