Want approval processes that truly serve your business requirements? More than 40,000 small and mid-sized businesses globally rely on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, the fastest-growing cloud ERP solution for SMBs. It empowers businesses to manage from finance to fulfillment with greater control and space to grow. Yet many companies struggle to tailor approval processes, particularly in challenging or highly regulated environments. That’s where you require custom workflows.

Here, you’ll discover how to do better than Business Central’s out-of-the-box approvals with a custom solution that’s specifically tailored to your particular process. You’ll find out how it can increase productivity, enhance compliance, and provide you with more real-time control.

Discover how Streams Solutions assists companies in creating more intelligent, scalable approval workflows in Microsoft Dynamics Business Central.

Why Custom Approval Workflows Matter for Today’s ERP?

Automated approval processes can save up to 70% of processing time, achieve better compliance, and rescue teams from follow-ups. 

Following are the reasons why businesses need custom workflows today:

• Increasing Business Processes Complexity

As organizations grow, processes become layered and multi-dimensional. A single sales order may include items that require separate approvals: capital equipment, regulated goods, and standard inventory products. Systems with a one-step approval assume uniform risk, but real-world operations require multiple gates and decision points for each record. 

Supply chain, finance, and legal often must review different line items independently. Default workflows cannot adapt to this complexity any longer.

• Need for Control and Flexibility

Teams must design workflows that reflect their actual structure and values rather than adjusting to generic approvals. Finance may need to approve anything above a threshold amount, procurement may need to vet vendor-based line items, and compliance must verify tax or regulation attachments. 

A system that batches everything together quickly erodes accountability. The ideal workflow allows precise control over who approves what and at which stage, ensuring agility remains aligned with accuracy.

• Compliance and Audit Demands

In highly regulated industries, approvals must be granular and traceable. Who signed off on each percentage of an invoice matters. Each line item may have a different compliance flag or percentage of completion. These details must appear in audit logs with timestamps, user IDs, and change records. Without this, data power gets replaced by compliance risk. General approval processes fail regulatory scrutiny because they lack granularity and detailed provenance.

• Shortcomings of Out-of-the-Box Systems

Built-in ERP workflows offer simplicity but limit adaptiveness. They cannot manage disputes, split workflows, or vendor-specific rules. The result is manual overrides that slice through the system safeguards, causing bottlenecks and compliance gaps. Standard workflows may work for simple companies, but they break under real-world scenarios like partial deliveries, contract amendments, or high-touch approval processes.

Critical Features of a Custom Approval Workflow Portal in Business Central

A tailored portal built over Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central delivers the features that standard systems do not. This specialized layer provides both control and automation aligned with how your teams operate.

• Line-by-Line Approval Capability

Approvers see individual lines, not just the entire order. Each item can be separated by type, vendor, or risk tier. The system renders line-level forms with native AL logic that pulls details from item tables in real time. Approvers work with information tied directly to item NAVIDs, enabling granular decisions and accountability.

• Role-Based Visibility

Approvers only see what they are responsible for. Business roles map directly to approval categories. For example, finance views all lines above specific dollar limits, procurement sees vendor-defined items, and compliance sees risk-flagged goods. The portal uses visibility filters and Azure Active Directory or Business Central role mappings to ensure no one sees or approves beyond their scope.

• Real-Time Sync with Sales Lines

The portal synchronizes instantly with Sales Line records in Business Central via internal APIs or database change tracking tables. If a sales order line changes, the portal updates accordingly within seconds. There is no stale data. The integrity of real-time synchronization prevents approvals occurring on outdated or inaccurate orders.

• Custom Approve / Reject Controls

Each line item includes approve and reject buttons with embedded validation rules coded in AL. The system prevents approvals if required fields are missing or end-dates are expired. If rejected, the approver must provide a comment stored in a custom table with timestamp and user ID. This provides instant audit trails and accountability.

• Automatic Release of Sales Order

Approval logic does not end with a green signal. It must trigger a state change that ties back into business continuity. In this case, once all line items on a sales order are approved, the system does not wait for a final push. Business Central is configured to release the order automatically. That release updates the order status, locks in the inventory, and pushes the document into the invoicing pipeline. 

• Future-Ready Extensibility

This is not just an approval portal. It is an automation layer built on top of Business Central with extensible AL code, event-driven logic, and seamless API integration. The codebase is modular. It allows hooks into Power Automate, Microsoft Teams, Slack, or whichever communication tool your business happens to use. You want to push reminders or escalation alerts? Done. You want a mobile-friendly interface where stakeholders can approve from anywhere, but securely and traceably? That is already baked in. Scalability here is not an ambition, it is an expectation. The infrastructure has already been engineered to evolve with your business.

Business Value Realized by Custom Approval Workflows

When you move from generic workflows to a portal designed around real approval behavior, the gains are operational, financial, and audit-grade.

• Granular Control
  

Every line item moves through its own workflow. Managers and compliance teams can see who touched what, when, and why, all in real time. This is not about control for the sake of it. It is about being audit-ready by design, not by workaround.

• Streamlined Processing
  

Sales orders do not move between inboxes or spreadsheets. The entire approval loop happens within one portal, tied to one system of record. That eliminates delays from fragmented communication, version mismatches, and off-system tracking.

• Compliance and Audit Readiness
  

All approval actions are time-stamped, attributed to authenticated users, and recorded alongside structured rejection comments where relevant. If you have ever had to piece together an audit trail from three systems and four people’s memories, this portal is your answer.

• Operational Efficiency
  

Inventory is reserved only when approvals are in. Fulfillment planning runs off clean data. There is no guessing, no duplicated effort, and no untraceable overrides. The result is smoother execution, fewer disputes, and faster cycles from order to revenue.

Steps for Developing Custom Approval Workflows

You do not just build a workflow. You solve a series of layered process problems with structured design logic. This is how to do it well.

• Define Business Goals

The workflow must support more than approvals. It must help achieve operational clarity, compliance discipline, or cash flow predictability. Without clear goals, the technical build loses direction.

• Map Key Roles and Stakeholders

Clarify who must approve what, and under what conditions. Finance might own value thresholds. Procurement might cover vendor categories. Legal might sign off on exceptions. That logic must be mapped, not assumed.

• Assess Current Approval Problems
  

Before you design, investigate. Are delays coming from ambiguous policies? Do approvers ignore requests because the data is incomplete? Diagnose before you prescribe.

• Develop Workflow Rules and Criteria
  

If a line item exceeds a certain value, or involves a restricted vendor, or is part of a government contract, what should happen? These rules must be defined clearly and stored in a business rule catalog that developers and business users can align on.

• Engage Technical Experts
  

Translate those rules into actual Business Central logic: extension tables, page modifications, API layers, and permission hierarchies. This is where AL developers and ERP architects come in.

• Test and Validate Workflow

Do not launch it and hope. Create personas. Run UAT cycles. Confirm that approval paths follow real business logic and not just happy-path conditions.

• Train and Communicate

Use walkthroughs. Do not just send documentation. Stakeholders must see what the workflow prevents, how it saves time, and why it is built the way it is.

• Monitor Performance and Iterate
  

Approval latency, rejection ratios, rework cycles,  these metrics are not vanity. They are feedback mechanisms that tell you what to fine-tune and where the process still has friction.

Integrating the Custom Approval Portal into Business Central

The solution is not external. It is embedded. It uses Business Central extension objects, AL modules, and first-party APIs to integrate seamlessly with the core Sales Order process. That means no version lockouts, no dependency on third-party add-ons, and no compromise on system performance.

• Custom Approvals Table

This is where the actual line-level logic lives. Each row tracks approval status, user, timestamps, and business context, giving you full traceability.

• Filtered Role Views

No user sees more than they should. Role-based filtering is enforced through both UI logic and back-end permission rules. This limits noise and improves speed of action.

• Business Central APIs

The portal communicates using standard Web Service pages. That means you can call it from external apps, preload data, or even trigger updates programmatically from CRM or procurement tools.

• Secure Access and Audit Tracking

Authentication is handled using Business Central OAuth. Every approval action, every rejection, and every rollback attempt is logged with user context and metadata.

Opportunities for Advanced Automation

Once the core workflow is in place and stable, you can start adding layers of automation that do not just reduce manual effort but actively improve responsiveness and operational insight. These are not luxury features. In modern approval environments, they are strategic enablers.

• Email Notifications
  

Pending approvals should never sit unnoticed. The system supports automated email notifications using secure SMTP or Graph connectors. You can set triggers for new requests, reminder nudges for delays, and escalation alerts if actions are not taken within a defined window. These alerts are not just time-based, they can be conditional, tied to risk, amount thresholds, or policy deviation.

• Power Automate Integration
  

Workflows often have exceptions that need more than a simple approval or rejection. Using Power Automate, you can design conditional logic that fires when a reject occurs, or when a high-value line item is pushed through. These workflows can update related records, notify legal, adjust procurement schedules, or flag risks in a compliance dashboard. Automation here is about orchestrating decisions, not replacing them.

• Mobile Access
  

Executives are not always at their desks. This portal supports mobile-friendly approval interfaces either via Business Central’s responsive design or through a custom app layer authenticated with Azure AD B2C. Managers can review and approve even while traveling, without compromising audit traceability or data integrity.

• Approval History Logs
  

This is where audit readiness becomes a structural feature. Every decision is logged with a timestamp, approver identity, comments, and associated line data. This approval history is queryable and exportable, whether for internal reviews, external audits, or compliance reporting. It eliminates the need for offline tracking and reconciliations during finance reviews or year-end processes.

Why Does This Matters to Business Leaders?

This is not just about approval efficiency. It is about building a system that aligns decision-making speed with financial accuracy and operational control. For any CEO, CFO, or CIO, this kind of capability is not a “nice-to-have.” It is a core requirement for scaling responsibly.

• Facilitating Faster, More Informed Decisions

Approvers no longer have to sift through irrelevant data. The portal provides exactly what is required for action. Each line item carries the context, the history, and the metadata needed to approve confidently. This compresses cycle times and improves decision quality.

• Strengthening Financial Discipline

Without line-level approval, leakage is inevitable. Sensitive items get bundled with routine ones. The portal prevents this by isolating approval paths and requiring justification where necessary. Financial discipline is not enforced through policy alone. It is enforced through system behavior.

• Supporting Regulatory and Audit Standards
  

When regulators or auditors ask, “Who approved this?” the answer must be immediate, clear, and uneditable. This workflow ensures every approval is tracked, verified, and time-locked. It meets not just internal governance standards, but external audit demands across industries.

• Reducing Manual Overhead and Operational Drag
  

The real cost of legacy workflows is not in the approvals themselves. It is in the back-and-forth, the manual logging, the follow-up emails, and the data reconciliation at the end of each quarter. This system eliminates that drag entirely. It gives teams back their time without losing control.

How Streams Solutions Can Help?

At Streams Solutions, we deliver tailored Business Central enhancements that adapt to your business rather than forcing you to adapt to generic software.

We have built custom approval workflows that:

• Reduce order processing time by up to 40 percent
• Improve visibility into finance and procurement
• Enhance compliance controls for internal and external audits

Whether you run on manufacturing, retail, services, or distribution, we can create an approval portal that is smart, compliant, and easy to use.

Maximizing Your Business Central Investment through Professional Services

Designing approval layers becomes complex at scale. We assist across every phase of your project:

• Technical Advisory: We translate business requirements into robust system architecture. This ensures streamlining without breaking existing functionality.
• Consult & Implement: Our experts guide you through migration, customization, UAT, training, and deployment with minimal disruption.
• Innovate: We design advanced workflows, such as line-level approvals and conditional rules that unlock automation, compliance, and efficiency.
• Managed Support: Our proactive support keeps your Business Central deployment running smoothly so your internal teams can focus on core priorities.

Next-Level Efficiency with Custom Approvals

Your business needs an ERP that adapts to actual operations. Custom workflows provide the structure, flexibility, and audit readiness required to excel in a complex environment.

Get ready to reinvent your approval processes. Streams Solutions can demonstrate what is possible. Contact us today to explore how we can streamline control and efficiency by building a custom approval portal in your Business Central landscape.