What a Content Approval Record Holds

Eight months on, the client's new marketing lead asks who signed off the pricing post. Your contact left in June, the thread is in an inbox nobody can open, and you're fairly sure it was fine. Fairly sure is a hard thing to say out loud on that call.

A content approval record is how you avoid saying it. It sits at the end of a content approval workflow, and it's the part people only miss once someone asks.

One Post's Record, Start to Finish

Here's a made-up post, as its history reads. The names, dates, and comment are all invented.

Read it from the top and you can answer the marketing lead's question, and the three that usually follow: what did they ask to change, was it changed, and which words did they finally say yes to?

Entries are added and never rewritten. When a post goes round again, the earlier answers stay where they are, so the record shows the whole road and leaves out nothing awkward.

What Each Entry Tells You

Every line says what happened, who did it, and when. Where it applies, it also gives the round, the asset, and the words someone wrote.

Here's what goes in, and how it reads:

The Exact Words They Said Yes To

"Approved" means little if nobody can say which version. The usual argument around sign-off is two people looking at two different drafts, each sure of what they read.

Each save of an asset's text is kept as its own version, and View Changes on the timeline shows what moved between two of them. On an approved post, See Approved Version opens the exact words the client approved. Those are also the words that go out, because approved text locks. We've written up why any edit sends a post back to Draft.

When someone needs proof of one post to hold in their hand, an Approval Certificate is a PDF of the approved text, with who approved it, the day, and a code anyone can check.

Three Ways a Post Moves On, Kept Apart

A record is only useful if it's honest about who decided. So these three never read alike, and none of them can be made to look like another.

The client's own answer shows their name as they typed it on the review page. A yes that came by WhatsApp or phone reads Approved externally, with who recorded it, and recording an outside approval covers how that's done. A post your team hands off with no answer says that too. Some clients sign nothing off at all, and with No Approver chosen, Ready for Client counts as the approval and is never shown as the client's own.

Finding It, and Taking It With You

The record lives on the client, under History, as monthly cards you can search and filter. Open a post for its timeline. Show Approval History opens the same timeline from the post itself.

Download Approval Record takes it out as a PDF or a CSV, for all time, a preset, or days you pick. The Owner and Editors can export. Internal notes are left out unless you tick to include them, and each is labeled Internal when you do. That tick is worth a pause before a record goes to a client.

Your client can get their own copy too. Their progress page lets them download the record, without your notes.

If You Keep Your Own in a Spreadsheet

You don't need our software to keep a decent record. A shared sheet does the job as long as somebody fills it in on the day. These are the columns we'd keep, and the second is the one people tend to skip.

• Post. One row per post, so a yes on one can't drift over to its neighbor.
• Version. A link to the exact file, or the text pasted in. A filename ending in FINAL doesn't count, as we've all learned.
• Who. The person's name, and whether they can approve.
• How. The channel, and who on your team wrote it down.
• When. The day they said it, not the day you got around to the sheet.
• What they said. Their words, as they wrote them.

Never overwrite a row. If the answer changes, add a new one, because a sheet that gets tidied can't answer the awkward question later.

What a Record Won't Do for You

• It's only as careful as the reader. A name on the review page is what the person typed. For a client who needs to be sure who's reading, turn on Emailed Review Code.
• It goes when the work goes. Delete a client and their approval history goes with them, and Delete Old Posts takes the record of each post it removes. If you might need it later, export it first.
• It holds your team's words too. Comments marked Internal are on the record. Write them as if the client's lawyer might one day ask you to tick the box.
• It tells you what happened. What that means under your contract is a question for the contract. Write down what counts as approval when you agree the work, and what a no-reply clause can and can't do is a good place to start.

Questions People Ask