Human Resources

Odoo Approvals: approval workflow software

Enterprise

Create and validate approvals requests

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Odoo Ready Partner
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What it does

What Odoo Approvals does

Odoo Approvals is the Enterprise app that manages structured approval requests across your business. Business travel requests, equipment purchases, contract reviews, training requests, vendor onboarding, parental leave extensions, anything that needs a manager or director's sign-off before it proceeds runs through a configurable approval workflow with a clean audit trail.

Growing companies that have outgrown email-based approval chains, regulated industries that need audit trails on every decision, and any business where approval bottlenecks slow down the work uses it. You can test Odoo Approvals free on the Odoo trial; pricing kicks in only if you install more than one Odoo app.

For Odoo's own product overview, see Odoo's official documentation.

How it works

The day-to-day flow

Setup starts on the Approval Type. Each type is a configurable request flow with its own custom fields (the data the requester needs to fill in), its own approver sequence (who signs off and in what order), its own attachment requirements (mandatory documents like quotes or contracts), and and a minimum number of approvers required. Common types ship in the box (Business Trip, Borrow Items, General Approval, Contract Approval, Payment Application, Car Rental, Procurement, Job Referral Award), and custom types can be added with no code.

From there, the day-to-day work runs as requests. An employee opens the Approvals app, picks the type they need (a business trip), fills in the form (destination, dates, estimated cost, business justification), attaches any supporting documents (a quote from the travel vendor, a meeting confirmation), and submits. The request lands on the first approver in the sequence with an email notification and a task on their dashboard.

The approver reviews, approves or refuses with a note, and the request moves to the next approver in the sequence (or closes if it is single-approver). Sequential approval is the default; parallel approval (multiple approvers in any order) is also configurable. When all approvers sign off, the request is approved and the requester gets notified. The audit trail logs every step: who approved, when, with what comment. With the Documents bridge installed, approved requests auto-file in the right workspace for record-keeping.

Calibre configures Odoo Approvals for Alberta businesses: step by step, in writing.

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In this module

What's inside Odoo Approvals

Configurable Approval Types
Each type of request (Business Trip, Borrow Items, Contract Review, Payment, Car Rental, Procurement, or any custom type you add) carries its own configuration of which fields are required, which approvers are involved, whether attachments are mandatory, and the minimum number of approvers needed to sign off. No code; configuration runs through the Approval Type screen.
Sequential and Parallel Approver Flows
Approver sequences can run in order (the first approver signs off, then the second, then the third) or in parallel (all approvers can act in any order). Sequential is the default for hierarchy-driven approvals; parallel works for multi-stakeholder decisions where any order is acceptable.
Custom Form Fields Per Type
Each Approval Type has its own form with custom fields configured for that request type. A travel request asks for destination, dates, and estimated cost; a procurement request asks for vendor, category, and budget code. Field types include text, numeric, date, multi-choice, file attachment, and lookups to Odoo records.
Mandatory Attachments
Per Approval Type, you set which attachments are mandatory. A vendor onboarding request might require a quote, a tax form, and a signed master agreement. The system blocks submission until the required attachments are uploaded.
Minimum Approver Count Per Type
Each Approval Type sets a minimum number of approvers needed to sign off. Combined with sequential or parallel ordering, this controls who must say yes (the requester's manager, a finance lead, a department head) before the request closes. The approver list is configured per type.
Email and In-App Notifications
Approvers get an email and an in-app notification when a new request lands on their queue. The notification carries the request details and a direct link to approve or refuse from the email. Requesters get a notification when the request is approved, refused, or escalated.
Audit Trail on Every Request
Every approval, refusal, comment, edit, and escalation logs to the request record with timestamp and user. For regulated industries, the audit trail satisfies the proof-of-decision-process requirement. Closed requests are archived but never deleted.
Mobile Approval From the Phone
The Odoo mobile app shows the approver's pending queue with the request details, the attached documents, and a one-tap approve or refuse action. An executive on the road can clear ten requests in five minutes between meetings.
Bulk Actions on the Approver Dashboard
The approver dashboard supports bulk actions: approve all pending requests of one type at once, refuse a batch with a common note, reassign requests to another approver if they are out of office. Useful for managers clearing a backlog after vacation.
Documents Bridge for Auto-Filing
With Odoo Documents installed alongside, approved requests can auto-file in a specific workspace with the right tags. An approved procurement request files in the Procurement workspace with the vendor tag; an approved travel request files in the Travel workspace with the year tag. Filing rules per Approval Type configure the destination.
Built for

Is Odoo Approvals right for your team?

Outgrowing the entry-level tools

SMBs whose data lives in QuickBooks, HubSpot Free, or Excel spreadsheets that were set up when the business was smaller. The team now spends hours building reports by hand and reconciling between tools every month-end.

Picking the right Odoo Approvals setup

Companies evaluating which Odoo apps to start with and how to configure them around how the business actually runs.

Operations across multiple tools

Retail, manufacturing, mechanical, or professional services businesses with 10 to 200 employees running on a patchwork of point tools. The team wants one database for the whole company instead of Zapier holding it together.

At a glance Enterprise tier Cloud, Odoo.sh, or self-host iOS + Android app 15-day free trial CSV migration from current tool Odoo Ready Partner support
Bundle

Apps people often run with Odoo Approvals

Odoo Approvals plugs into Odoo Employees for the requester roster and the manager-of relationship that often drives the default approver. Odoo Mail handles the email notifications and the in-app discussion thread on each request. With Odoo Documents (Enterprise), approved requests auto-file in the right workspace with the right tags through the documents-approvals bridge. With Odoo HR Expense, expense reports run through their own approval flow with similar mechanics. With Odoo Purchase, procurement requests can connect to actual purchase orders downstream. The audit trail and the workflow patterns are the same approach used in Time Off approvals, expense report approvals, and purchase order approvals across the suite.

Odoo EmployeesCentralize employee information
Odoo DocumentsCollect, organize and share documents.
Odoo PurchasePurchase orders, tenders and agreements
Odoo Time OffAllocate time off and follow leave requests
Odoo DiscussChat, mail gateway and private channels
Odoo ExpensesSubmit, validate and reinvoice employee expenses
Pricing

What Odoo Approvals costs

One App Free
CA$0
forever
  • One app, unlimited users
  • Multi-company allowed
  • Odoo Online hosting
  • Dependent apps included free
If Odoo Approvals is the only Odoo app you install
Most teams pick this
Standard
CA$35.20
/user/month, billed yearly
  • Every Odoo app included
  • Odoo Online hosting
  • Free 15-day trial
  • iOS + Android mobile app
Start free trial →
Charged monthly: CA$44/user. Yearly billing saves 20%.
Custom
CA$55
/user/month, billed yearly
  • Everything in Standard
  • Studio (no-code customizer)
  • Multi-company management
  • Hosting: Online, Odoo.sh, or on-premise
  • External API access
Choose this when you need custom layouts or multi-company management.
Calibre Implementation
Quote
phase-by-phase, in writing
  • Scoping, configuration, training
  • Data migration from your current tool
  • Named engineer through go-live and support
Book the call →
Free 45-minute scoping call. Quote in writing before any code ships.

Pricing source: Odoo's published Standard and Custom plans as of 2026-05. Calibre quotes in CAD; conversion from Odoo's local pricing in your region may vary.

Questions

Common questions about Odoo Approvals

Is Odoo Approvals free?
Odoo Approvals is part of the paid Odoo Enterprise tier (around CA$35.20 per user per month billed annually for the full Odoo suite). You can test it free on the Odoo 15-day trial alongside every other app. Odoo's one-app-free rule applies: if Approvals is the only Odoo app you install on Odoo Online, you pay nothing for the software, forever. Because Approvals works best with Employees alongside (for the approver hierarchy) and often with Documents (for auto-filing), most deployments install multiple apps and land on the paid Standard plan.
What's the difference between Odoo Approvals in Community and Enterprise?
Odoo Approvals is part of the Enterprise tier. There is no Community version. Community users can build custom approval flows through Odoo's automation framework and email notifications, but the configurable Approval Types, the sequential/parallel sequences, the custom form fields, the mandatory attachments, the SLA and escalation, the audit trail, the mobile dashboard, and the documents bridge all live in Enterprise.
Can we migrate our existing approval workflows into Odoo?
Yes. Odoo Approvals accepts CSV and Excel imports for the Approval Type configurations (custom fields, approver sequences, attachments, SLA), historical request records (date, requester, type, approvers, status, comments), and the user-to-approver mappings. The work is rarely the upload itself, it is mapping your existing workflow patterns (sometimes documented as Visio diagrams or Excel checklists) to Odoo's structure cleanly so the audit trail makes sense on day one. Calibre handles the workflow mapping during the rollout.
Does Odoo Approvals connect with our HR, expense, and purchase processes?
Yes, in different ways. Approvals app handles general-purpose requests (Business Trip, Training, Equipment, Contract Review) that do not have their own dedicated app. For specific workflows, HR Expense has its own approval flow built in for expense reports, Time Off has its own for leave requests, and Purchase has its own for purchase orders above a threshold. The patterns are similar (configurable approvers, audit trail, mobile approval), but each domain runs in its own app. Approvals app is for the requests that don't fit one of those specialized flows.
Can approvers approve requests from their phone?
Yes. The Odoo mobile app (iOS and Android) shows the approver's pending queue with the request details, the custom field values, and the attached documents. One tap approves or refuses; a longer note can be added if needed. Push notifications fire when a new request lands. The polished native mobile app is part of the Enterprise tier (Approvals itself is Enterprise, so this is implicit).
Can we run multi-level approvals (manager then director then VP)?
Yes. Sequential approver sequences support any number of levels in order. The request lands on the first approver; on approval, it moves to the second; and so on. Each level can be a specific user, a manager-of relationship (the requester's manager), or a role (any director, any VP). Refusal at any level returns the request to the requester (or to a configured fallback state) with the refusal note attached.
What happens if an approver is on vacation or does not respond?
An out-of-office approver can delegate their approvals to another user temporarily through the user settings, so requests continue to flow. The Approvals app itself does not ship with time-based SLA escalation; if an approver simply does not respond and has not delegated, the request waits in their queue until they (or an Approval Manager who has the override permission) act on it. For more aggressive escalation, the team's manager can monitor the pending queue and reassign stale requests manually, or wire a custom automation rule against the standard automation framework.

Working with Calibre

How long does a Calibre implementation typically take?
Single-module rollouts on an existing Odoo setup run 2-6 weeks depending on data migration scope. Greenfield Odoo with a multi-module rollout runs 4-16 weeks. Calibre commits to a written, phase-by-phase timeline after the free scoping call before any code is written.
How much does a Calibre implementation cost?
Cost depends on module scope, user count, custom work, and migration complexity. Calibre's posture is a written fixed-phase quote after the scoping call rather than an hourly engagement, so the cost is committed in writing before the first commit.
What happens to our data if we ever want to leave Odoo?
Everything exports. CSV, XML, or a full PostgreSQL database dump, yours on day one. Migrating off Odoo has been done before and it's not a one-way door.
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Talk to Calibre about Odoo Approvals.

Written, phase-by-phase quote before any code is written. Odoo Ready Partner, Calgary. In-house team, no offshore handoffs.

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What you get

  • Free 45-minute scoping call with an Odoo-certified engineer
  • Module-by-module fit/gap assessment
  • Written, phase-by-phase quote
  • Named engineer for implementation and support
  • Data-export commitment in writing