ApproveThis manages your COR Integration approvals.

Why ApproveThis and COR Together Make Sense

Let’s cut to the chase: creative agencies live in the messy space between client demands and actual profitability. COR helps you track time and predict project outcomes. ApproveThis makes sure the right people sign off on critical decisions. Connect them through Zapier, and you’ve got a system that actually prevents last-minute scrambles when the client asks “Who approved this?”

Here’s the kicker – your approvers don’t need COR licenses to review requests. Client stakeholders, freelance partners, that busy creative director who’s always on shoot? They can approve directly from their email while you keep COR as your single source of truth. No more license sprawl, no more “I didn’t see the request in the system” excuses.

Four Ways This Combo Actually Fixes Agency Headaches

1. Kill Invoice Surprises Before They Kill Your Margins

The Problem: Your project manager approves a rush fee in COR. Accounting processes the invoice. Two weeks later, the client pushes back on the unexpected cost.

The Fix: Auto-create ApproveThis requests for every new COR invoice. Route to both internal finance leads and client contacts. Bonus points: Set approval thresholds so anything over $5k automatically pings the agency partner.

Who Cares: Account directors tired of playing mediator between finance and clients. This is your audit trail when scope creep happens.

2. Stop Giving Away Free Overtime Hours

The Problem: Your team logs 20 unbilled hours on a project because “the client asked for quick tweaks.” Sound familiar?

The Fix: Trigger time entries in COR only after approvals in ApproveThis. No approval? Those hours get flagged as internal training time instead of client-billable.

Who Cares: Operations leads who need to hit 85%+ utilization rates. Now you can prove exactly which client requests torpedoed your margins.

3. Actually Enforce Creative Briefs (Without Being the Bad Guy)

The Problem: New tasks get added in COR without proper specs. Designers waste three rounds of revisions because “the client changed their mind.”

The Fix: Auto-create ApproveThis requests for every new COR task. Require uploaded creative briefs or signed SOWs before the task becomes active. Use conditional logic to fast-track small edits but gatekeep major changes.

Who Cares: Creative directors who want to protect their team from scope creep hell. Clients get trained to respect the process when the system doesn’t budge without approvals.

4. Stop Letting Approved Requests Die in Email Threads

The Problem: That urgent client approval came through... and now the project manager has to manually update five systems.

The Fix: When ApproveThis sends a “yes,” auto-update COR project statuses, unlock budgets, or trigger next-phase tasks. Denied? COR tasks get paused with notes explaining why.

Who Cares: Everyone. But especially PMs tired of being human API connectors between systems.

Setting This Up Without Losing Your Mind

If you can make a sandwich, you can connect these systems:

1. Grab your Zapier account (they’ve got a free tier)
2. Pick a trigger from COR – new invoice, task, whatever
3. Choose ApproveThis as the action app
4. Map COR fields to your approval template (takes 2 minutes)

Pro tip: Start with one workflow. The “invoice approval → COR status update” is a crowd favorite. Once that works, clone your Zap for other processes.

Why This Isn’t Just Another “Integration”

ApproveThis brings three things to COR that most agencies hack together with sticky notes:

• Email approvals that don’t suck: Approvers click once – no logins, no passwords. Perfect for clients who still print PDFs.
• Vacation coverage that actually works: COR knows who’s OOO. ApproveThis auto-reassigns their approvals. No more chasing down backups.
• Calculated fields for smart routing: If a COR task exceeds 20% of budget, ApproveThis escalates it before it blows up.

Who Benefits (Besides Your Sanity)

Account Teams: Stop CC’ing everyone on “APPROVE THIS” emails. Now clients get a clean, trackable request that doesn’t get buried under cat memes.

Finance: COR’s AI predicts profitability. ApproveThis ensures no unbilled hours or expenses slip through. Actual P&L protection.

Creative Teams: Fewer last-minute “emergency” requests because approvals gatekeep unrealistic asks.

The Bottom Line for Agencies

Creative shops using COR + ApproveThis typically cut approval delays by 70%. That’s projects starting faster, invoices getting paid sooner, and teams actually hitting predicted margins. But the real win? Clients stop viewing approvals as friction – it becomes part of your “professional process” branding.

Ready to stop being your team’s human workflow engine? Get ApproveThis, connect it to COR via Zapier, and actually trust your systems for once.

FAQs for the Skeptical Agency Owner

“We already use COR’s built-in approvals.”
Great – now add legal oversight without making attorneys learn COR. ApproveThis handles external sign-offs COR can’t.

“Our clients won’t use another system.”
They don’t have to. ApproveThis sends emails that work on iPhones. Even your least tech-savvy client can click “Approve.”

“How long until we see ROI?”
One agency recovered 32 billable hours/month in project manager time. At $150/hour, that’s $57k/year. Your mileage may vary, but lunch money it’s not.