ApproveThis manages your Plug&Pay Integration approvals.

When Approvals Meet Payments: No More Middle Managers Required

Let’s cut to the chase: if your team is still chasing down approvals via Slack pings or forwarding payment forms through six email threads, you’re wasting about 17% of your workweek. That’s not us being dramatic – that’s the actual math on how much time gets eaten by approval bottlenecks.

This is why pairing ApproveThis with Plug&Pay isn’t just some “nice-to-have” integration. It’s a straight-up bypass for the most annoying parts of running a mid-sized business. Think of it like giving your CFO a caffeine IV drip made entirely of automated workflows.

What Happens When You Connect the Dots

Plug&Pay handles the money moves – subscriptions, affiliate payouts, one-click upsells. ApproveThis handles the red tape – sign-offs, compliance checks, budget approvals. Connect them through Zapier, and you’ve got a system where:

• Affiliate agreements get human approval before payouts go live
• Subscription changes require exactly 1.7 clicks instead of five emails
• Your legal team stops CC’ing the entire company on contract revisions

We’re not talking about marginal gains here. For companies processing 500+ transactions/month, this combo recovers about 40 hours/month in lost productivity. That’s an entire workweek you’re currently leaving on the table.

Three Ways This Isn’t Your Dad’s Approval Process

1. Affiliate Management That Doesn’t Require a Law Degree

Example: A 200-person SaaS company uses Plug&Pay’s affiliate system but keeps getting burned by sketchy partners. Their old process? Sales ops would manually PDF every new affiliate application, email it to legal, then pray someone replies before quarter-end.

The Fix: Every time Plug&Pay flags an accepted affiliate, ApproveThis auto-generates a review task for legal. Approval thresholds kick in – if the affiliate’s commission rate exceeds 15%, it requires CFO sign-off. All without the affiliate ever knowing there’s a debate happening.

2. Form Submissions That Actually Submit

Scenario: A 1,200-employee e-commerce brand uses Plug&Pay forms for discount requests. Previously, marketing would get 30+ “URGENT: 20% OFF FOR VIP CUSTOMER???” emails daily. Chaos ensued.

The Fix: Now, every form submission triggers an ApproveThis workflow with calculated fields. If the requested discount would drop margins below 35%, it automatically routes to the CFO + CMO. Otherwise, just the marketing director. Bonus: approvers can reject/approve via email without logging into anything.

3. Invoices That Don’t Require a Paper Trail (or a Time Machine)

Real Talk: When ApproveThis approves a vendor payment, Plug&Pay auto-generates the invoice. No more finance vs. procurement slap fights over “Wait, was this approved??” Because the approval is the paper trail. For companies with 50+ monthly vendors, this cuts payment processing time from 14 days to about 48 hours.

Why Your Teams Will Actually Use This (Instead of Just Lying About It)

Most workflow tools fail because they’re clunky. ApproveThis works because it meets teams where they already are:

Finance Teams: Set approval thresholds so anything under $5K gets auto-approved. Anything over routes to the right VP. Plug&Pay handles the rest.

Sales Ops: Vacation delegation means deals don’t stall because someone’s at Burning Man. If the CRO’s offline, approvals shift to their second-in-command automatically.

External Partners: Affiliates/vendors approve terms in ApproveThis without needing Plug&Pay logins. No more “Can you resend the portal invite?” emails.

Setting This Up Without Hiring a Zapier Expert

Total setup time: 23 minutes if you’ve used Zapier before. 45 if you’re learning as you go. Here’s the cheat sheet:

1. Connect Plug&Pay to Zapier (use their pre-built integration)
2. Choose your trigger – “New Affiliate Accepted” or “Form Submitted”
3. Map the key data points to ApproveThis fields (commission rate, customer tier, etc.)
4. Set approval rules – thresholds, required approvers, escalation paths
5. Test with a $0.01 test transaction to confirm the flow

Pro Tip: Use ApproveThis’ calculated fields to auto-flag requests that need extra scrutiny. Like if an affiliate’s promo code usage spikes by 300% overnight.

The Part Where We Tell You What To Do Next

If you’ve read this far, you’re either genuinely interested or avoiding actual work. Either way, here’s your move:

For Teams Already Using Plug&Pay: Book a 15-minute demo showing how approval workflows plug into your existing payment processes. We’ll show you live examples from similar companies.

For Teams Using Other Payment Tools: First, switch to Plug&Pay. (Seriously – their subscription management alone is worth it.) Then come back here.

Either way, stop letting approval bottlenecks throttle your growth. At scale, every hour saved on administrative crap compounds into real revenue. Or you could keep forwarding PDFs – your call.