--- title: "Approvals: deciding on requests that are waiting on you" description: "How money movements are held for sign-off in Qualy—what an approval request is, where to decide on one, what happens after you approve or reject, and how to read a request that no longer applies." lastModified: "2026-08-27" lang: "en" wordCount: 2442 url: https://qualyhq.com/training/approvals/approving-and-rejecting-requests --- ## Site navigation - [For schools](/international-education/for-schools.md) — For international education schools - [For agents](/international-education/for-education-agents.md) — For international education agents - [Explore](/training.md) — Watch videos on how to use Qualy - [About](/about.md) — Learn about Qualy's mission and values - [Pricing](/pricing) - [5-min demo](/demo.md) - [Login](https://dashboard.qualyhq.com) # Approvals: deciding on requests that are waiting on you > Sign off on the money that needs a human before it moves. ## At a glance - **Intended for:** Everyone - **Available in:** All plans - **Reading time:** 6 minutes - **Last updated:** 8th August 2026 ## Quick summary When a payment, payout, split, direct debit or refund matches one of your approval policies, Qualy holds it and raises an approval request. The item sits at Pending review and nothing moves until someone signs off. Approvers get an email, and the request also shows up in Approvals in the main menu and on the item itself. Approving releases the money; rejecting stops it for good. The decision is recorded against the item with who decided, when, and any comment they left. ## Overview Some money should not leave on one person's say-so. Approvals is how Qualy holds a movement until somebody signs off on it. When a payment, payout, split, direct debit or refund matches one of your **approval policies**, Qualy raises an **approval request** against it and parks the item at **Pending review**. Nothing is charged, sent or refunded while that request is open. Once it resolves, the item carries on by itself—released if approved, stopped if rejected. The request is a companion record, not a new status on the item. That distinction matters when you are reading a screen: the *item* says **Pending review**, the *request* says **Pending**, **Approved**, **Rejected** or **Canceled**. Which movements get held is set in **Approval policies**, and every Qualy account starts with a default policy per item type covering your admins. See [Setting up approval policies](/training/approvals/setting-up-approval-policies.md). ## Where requests reach you There are three ways in, and they all act on the same request. Deciding in one place resolves it everywhere. **Approvals in the main menu.** The queue of everything in your scope, filtered to **Pending** by default. Tabs across the top split it by item type—**All**, **Transaction**, **Payout**, **Payment split**, **Authorization**, **Refund**—each with a live count of what is waiting. **The item itself.** Open the payment, payout, split, direct debit or refund and it carries an **Approval** panel showing the same request, how long it has been **Held**, who asked for it, and the Approve and Reject buttons. You do not have to leave the record you were already looking at. **Email.** Everyone eligible to decide gets one when the request is raised, with the amount, the customer, the payment number and a link straight to the request. If it stays pending, Qualy re-sends every two days until somebody decides. Integration keys and bots are never emailed—they act programmatically. The item's own **Approve this transaction** action is the older review step, and Qualy disables it while an approval request is open—it reads *"Available once the pending approval request is decided"*. If you are looking for a button that does nothing, that is why. Decide on the request instead. ## Reading the queue Each row is one request, and the columns are built for someone who did not raise it. - **Item** — the item type, plus the customer's name and the payment it belongs to. Click the payment chip to open the payment; click anywhere else to open the request. - **Amount** — the figure you are actually authorising. On a cross-currency payout that is what the recipient receives, with a grey second line showing roughly what will be sent to buy it. - **Waiting on** — the approvers, filling in as they decide, with the strategy underneath so you can tell "Any approver" from "All approvers" at a glance. - **Requested by** — whoever set the underlying item in motion. - **Status** and **Created** — the request's own state, and how long it has been sitting there. Use **Filter** to widen the status beyond Pending when you are looking for something already decided. ## Making a decision Open the request and you get the whole picture on one page: the item under review with its reference, method and requester; the decision history; and the **Decision** panel on the right. Before the buttons, the panel answers *What does it do?* in one sentence written for the item in front of you—"Approving this sends AUD 1,240.00 to Sydney Language College", "Approving this refunds AUD 380.00 to Leonardo Davinci and sends the money—it can't be undone", "Approving this records an external payment of AUD 500.00 from Leonardo Davinci—collected outside Qualy, so no money moves here". Read it. Two of those move money and one does not, and the amounts alone will not tell you which. Add a comment if the decision needs explaining, then **Approve** or **Reject**. The comment is stored on the decision and shown in the history—it is the only context the next person gets. On a cross-currency payout you are approving the **target** leg, the amount the recipient gets. The figure leaving your balance is a live quote and gets re-priced when the money actually moves, which is why it is shown as an approximation. In a hurry with a queue you already understand? The thumbs-up and thumbs-down buttons at the end of each row decide without opening the request—one confirm click and the row drops out of the pending list. Ticking several rows gives you the same two actions in bulk. ## What happens after you decide Approving hands the item back to the part of Qualy that owns it, and it resumes on the same path it would have taken without a policy in the way. - An **approved payout** is released and marked paid—identical to pressing Send. - An **approved payment split** is marked paid, and the payout linked to it follows. - An **approved transaction** carries on processing. - An **approved refund** is sent to the customer. - An **approved authorization** either sets up the mandate or draws the charge, depending on which action the request named. Rejecting stops the item: the payout fails, the split is canceled, the transaction is rejected, the refund is not sent. That is final for that release—the same item cannot be re-sent against a rejected approval. Raising it again mints a new request. ### When a decision stops covering the item An approval is a decision about a specific figure. If the amount or currency moves afterwards, releasing on the old decision would be releasing money nobody signed off on, so Qualy refuses and asks again. The original decision is kept and marked superseded—you will see the current request plus **Previous attempts** holding the earlier one. An auditor reading three approved requests on one payout can then tell one re-asked decision from three separate sign-offs. Cross-currency payouts get a margin instead of an exact match, because the send amount is re-quoted between approval and execution. How far it may rise before Qualy asks again is set per policy, and defaults to 5%. Only rises count—if the rate moves in your favour and you send less, nobody is asked twice. ### When a release never confirms One state is worth recognising because it looks like success and is not. **Attempted, never confirmed** means the approval went through, the release reached the payment provider, and the provider never came back with an outcome. Qualy deliberately does not retry it—an automatic retry could pay twice. Check with the provider and talk to support before sending anything again. ## Frequently asked questions ### I approved the payment in the window where I processed it, but nothing happened—did I approve it twice? You did not pay twice. An approval request accepts one decision per person and resolves once, and the money only moves when the request resolves—so a second attempt on the same request cannot release it a second time. What usually happened is this: the item's own Approve this transaction action is the old review step, and Qualy disables it while an approval request is pending ("Available once the pending approval request is decided"). The decision has to go on the request itself—from the Approval panel on the item, from Approvals in the main menu, or from the link in the email. If you approved the request and the item is still sitting at Pending review a few minutes later, open the request: if it shows "Attempted, never confirmed", the release reached the payment provider and the provider never confirmed the outcome. Qualy will not retry that automatically—check with the provider and contact support before re-sending. ### I got an email asking me to approve a payment. What is it, and do I have to do something? It means you are listed as an approver on the policy that matched a real money movement, and it is waiting on you. The email names the item, the amount, who requested it and the customer it concerns, and links straight to the request. Open it, read the "What does it do?" line, and approve or reject. If you are not expecting to be an approver, do not decide—ask whoever administers your Qualy account to check the approver list on the policy. Qualy sends a reminder every two days while a request stays pending, so ignoring one does not make it go away. ### I approved it and the payment still says Pending review. Why hasn't it changed? Pending review is the item's status, not the request's. It clears once the request resolves and Qualy resumes the item—usually within seconds. If the strategy is All approvers or Sequential, your approval is only one of several and the item stays held until the last one lands; the request will say "1 of 3 approved" or "Waiting on {name}". If it is still Pending review after a few minutes with the request showing Approved, that is a resume that did not complete—open the request and look for "Attempted, never confirmed", then contact support rather than re-sending. ### Can I approve a payment I raised myself? Yes, if you are on the approver list. Qualy does not enforce separation of duties—the person who created a payment can approve it. If your business needs a second pair of eyes, that is set in the policy: choose the All approvers or Sequential strategy, or list approvers who are not the people raising the payments. See Setting up approval policies. ### Is this the same as the PayTo or direct debit authorisation my bank asks for? No. A Qualy approval is an internal sign-off by someone on your team before Qualy acts. A PayTo agreement or a direct debit mandate is the customer authorising their own bank to let the money be taken. They are separate steps and one never replaces the other: a payment can be waiting on your approver, on the customer's bank, or on both. The Approvals queue only shows the first kind. ### The request says 'This approval no longer applies'. What happened? The amount or currency of the item moved after the decision was made, so the approval stopped covering it and Qualy asked again rather than releasing a figure nobody signed off. The original decision is kept as a historical fact—it is marked superseded, not erased—and a fresh request is raised at the current figure the next time the item is sent. On the item you will see the current request plus a "Previous attempts" section holding the earlier one. Nothing was paid twice; only a resolved, current request can release money. ### Everyone who can approve is away. Can I add myself to a request? If you hold the super-admin role, yes—open the request and use Add myself as an approver. It adds you to that one request so you can act on it, and removes nobody. It does not change the policy, so the next request goes back to the original roster. If you want the change to stick, edit the policy's approver list instead. ### Can I decide on several requests at once? Yes. Tick the rows in Approvals and use the bulk Approve or Reject action—it decides every selected pending request in one go. Anything that could not be decided (already resolved, or not yours to decide) is skipped and counted in the confirmation message. Bulk decisions record the same audit trail as individual ones, but they skip the "What does it do?" explainer, so use them when you already know what is in the batch. ### What happens if I reject a request? The money does not move and the item stops. A payout is marked failed, a payment split is canceled, a transaction is rejected, and a refund is not sent. A rejection is final for that release—the same item cannot be re-sent against a rejected approval ("The approval backing this release was rejected; it cannot be re-sent"). To pay it after all, raise it again, which mints a fresh request. Leave a comment when you reject; it is stored on the decision and it is the only explanation the next person gets. ### Why can't I see the Approve and Reject buttons? Three reasons cover almost every case. You may not hold the approvals action role—the panel says "You don't have permission to act on approvals" with the role it needs. You may not be an approver on that particular request, or it may not be your turn under a Sequential strategy—the panel says "This request is awaiting another approver". Or the request is already resolved, in which case it shows the outcome and the date instead. One more case is rarer: if your approver role was removed or your account deactivated after the request was raised, the attempt is refused and the request is handed to the current admins. ### Does approving a direct debit take money from the customer? It depends which action is being approved, and the request says which. "Authorization setup" sets up the mandate so future payments can be collected automatically—no money moves. "Charge" draws a specific amount against a mandate that already exists—that one does move money. The "What does it do?" line on every request spells out the effect in a sentence before you decide. ### Where can I see who approved something after the fact? On the request, under Decision history—every approval and rejection with the person, the timestamp and their comment. The same events also land in the item's own activity feed ("approved this request", "auto-approved this request", "canceled this approval"), so a payout or payment carries its sign-off history without you having to find the request. Auto-approvals are recorded there too, even though no person was involved. ## Prefer doing this via the Qualy API? Head over to our developer docs for everything you need—endpoints, examples, and simple how-tos. 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