Set up your approval chain

The approval chain decides whose Inbox each timesheet and invoice lands in. You sit at the top. Below you go the approvers, each with their own departments and duties & rights. How sign-off moves through the tree is explained in The approval chain.

Step by step

1. Open the project's Crew tab and scroll past your crew to Approval chain & rights. It appears once the project has a position, and only on Main, so switch back if you're in a scenario. Personal projects don't have a chain. Producers and co-producers can see and edit it. Co-producers sit beside you at the top and can give final sign-off too.
2. Tap Add first approver and pick a position. Tick at least one duty or right under Select duties & rights, then tap Add member. If nobody holds that position's department yet, it's attached automatically. If someone already does, you pick from the departments that are still free under Select departments. You can also skip that step by tapping Add member with nothing ticked. If no department is free, the app skips it for you. Either way the approver is added without departments, and you drag a chip onto them afterwards. Directly under you, though, an approver without departments becomes a whole-team role (see step 3). After the first one, use the small + buttons. The + under a card with no reports adds an approver below it, and the + at either end of a row adds a parallel approver. You're always at the top and can't be removed. Approvers are picked by position, so add the positions you need first.
3. Drag department chips onto approvers to set what they cover. You get a chip for every department the project has a position in. A department belongs to the deepest approver who holds it, and whatever you leave unassigned stays with you. Lower in the tree, an approver with no departments gets no hours or invoices from crew outside the chain, only what comes up from the approvers under them. Directly under you it works differently. An approver without departments there becomes a whole-team role and loses Timesheet and Finance.
4. Tap an approver to open Chain member details. Tap Edit duties & rights, tick what they need and tap Save. One has to stay ticked. Timesheet and Finance are approval duties, so items wait in that person's Inbox. The other three only unlock actions. What each one allows is listed under Duties & rights.
5. Check the route. Hours and invoices each have their own route. Submitted hours go first to the lowest approver who holds the department and has Timesheet. If there is none, they come straight to you. From there they climb through every approver above who also has Timesheet, until they reach you or a co-producer. Anyone without Timesheet is skipped. An approver's own hours start with the nearest approver above them who has Timesheet. Invoices work the same way with Finance: first to the lowest approver who holds the department and has Finance, otherwise straight to you, then up through approvers with Finance. So one department's hours and invoices can end up with entirely different people. See Review and approve hours and Invoices.

Change the chain

Drag a card onto another approver to make it report to them. Drop it beside one to change the order. To take a department back, drag its chip onto the producer's card at the top. If that was the last department of an approver with no reports, you're asked whether to remove them.

Dragging only works while all the chips next to Filter by right: are on. Switching one off hides approvers who only hold that right.

To remove an approver, open their Chain member details and tap Delete approver. Their reports move up a level and anything waiting on them goes to the next approver.

You can change the chain mid-shoot. Items nobody has signed yet are routed again. Items already partway up stay where they are unless their approver can no longer approve them, and then they move up.