VisitsTracker

VisitsTracker › Approvals

Nobody has to chase an approval

A decision on someone’s leave, claim or hours shows up where they will see it — in the app on their phone and in the console — carrying who decided it and anything they said about it.

No card needed. Set up in an afternoon.

Waiting on you3 items
P. Sharma · annual leave18–22 Aug · 5 working daysawaiting
J. Hartley · mileage41.2 km travelled · derived£11.57
S. Kaur · expensereceipt attached£64.20

Decisions land in the worker's app as well as the console, with who decided and why.

Where it is

Every approval has a name against it

The reason approvals rot is that nobody can see whose desk they are on. A queue that shows the holder is a queue that moves.

  • Sorted by how long it has waited, oldest first, not by when it arrived.
  • The person holding it is named on the row, so chasing is a message, not a hunt.
  • Approving in bulk is possible, but each line still records who approved it.
Awaiting approval9 open
Timesheet · N. Byrneheld by A. Whittaker4 d
Mileage · J. Hartleyheld by A. Whittaker2 d
Leave · P. Sharmaheld by S. Kaur1 d
Expense · S. Kaurheld by the owner3 h

Four days is not a queue, it is a person. Naming them is most of the fix.

Reaching people

It goes to the phone, not to an inbox nobody opens

A notification that only lands in email is a notification that waits for somebody to be at a desk. These reach the handset that is already in use.

  • Push to the app, email, or a webhook into whatever you already run.
  • Rules decide who hears about what, so managers are not copied on everything.
  • Quiet hours are respected for everything except the alerts you mark urgent.
Notification rules6 active
Timesheet submittedto the named approverpush
Approval older than 48 hto the approver and their managerpush + email
SOS raisedeveryone, ignores quiet hoursall channels
Weekly summaryowners and auditorsemail, Mon 08:00

Escalation

Nothing sits still without somebody hearing about it

If an item waits past the window you set, it climbs. That is the whole mechanism, and it is the reason a queue does not quietly become a backlog.

  • Set the window per type: expenses can wait, an SOS cannot.
  • Escalation adds a recipient rather than moving the item, so nobody loses it.
  • The escalation itself is logged, so you can see which rules actually fire.
48 hthen it escalates
9open right now
4 doldest item
2escalated this week

Also in the box

The answer finds the person who asked

Every line goes to the record

Open one and you land on the request it is about, not on a list you then have to search. A notification you cannot act on is worse than none.

Built from the record, not a separate log

The list is read from the requests and decisions themselves. There is no second notification store that can drift out of step with what actually happened, and nothing to prune.

The phone keeps the last list it saw

Open it in a basement and the decisions it last fetched are still there, marked as what the phone last saw. It refreshes when signal returns.

What counts as “new”

The “new since you last looked” marker is per device. Read your updates on the phone and the console will still show them as new, and the other way round — the list itself is the same on both, because both read the same records.

Straight answers

Questions people ask

How does someone find out their leave was approved?

It appears in their updates in the app and in the bell in the console, with who decided it and any note they left. They do not have to remember to open the leave screen and read a status.

Do managers get this too, or only field staff?

Both, in one place. A manager sees what is waiting on them at the top, and decisions on their own leave and claims underneath. Their own requests were the half that used to be invisible.

Does it work without signal?

On the phone, yes — it shows the last list it fetched rather than an error, and refreshes when signal comes back. The console needs a connection like the rest of it.

Is there a separate inbox to keep tidy?

No. The list is derived from the requests and decisions themselves, so there is nothing to archive, nothing to delete, and nothing that can disagree with the record.

What is actually in the list?

Decisions on leave, expense claims and timesheet corrections; a week being signed off; and visits assigned to you. For anyone who can approve, also what is waiting on them.

Try it on one van for a week.

Put it on one phone, run a normal week, and see what comes out the other end.