Big Commerce Order Approval

1 August 7, 2025

1. Overview

Order Approvals for BigCommerce sits between your storefront and fulfillment: it watches incoming orders, evaluates your custom rules, and routes each order through the exact sign-off steps you design. Once an order clears all steps, it’s released to fulfillment; a denial at any point halts or cancels the order.

2. Accessing the Interface

After logging in to ApproveThis, click Apps/ApproveThis in the Side Nav. In the header you’ll always see:

  • Store (your friendly store name)
  • User (your email)
  • Role (only visible if you’re an Admin)

Admins can configure everything; non-admins see only My Approvals.

3. Managing Approval Requests

When an order matches any step condition, it appears under My Approvals → Pending. From here:

  • Click View Order to open the native BigCommerce order
  • Click Approve or Deny to apply your decision (mapped in Settings)
  • Use the refresh icon to sync the latest requests

Decisions move the request into Approved or Denied, and update the BigCommerce status immediately.

4. Building Workflows

In the Workflow tab you define each approval stage in sequence. To create a step:

  1. Enter a name (e.g. “Finance Approval”) and hit Enter
  2. Drag the handle ≡ to reorder steps, or click 🗑 to delete
  3. Inside a step, add approvers by email
  4. If you need conditional routing, click Add Condition and set rules (for example, Order Total > 1000)

Steps without conditions apply to all orders.

5. Configuring Settings

Before any order hits the queue, complete these three tasks:

  1. Store Name
    Edit the friendly label shown in emails and the UI.
  2. Order Status Mapping
    Choose which BigCommerce status corresponds to Pending, Approved, and Denied. Typical mappings:
    • Pending → Manual Verification Required
    • Approved → Awaiting Fulfillment
    • Denied → Cancelled
  3. Integration Health
    Ensure both BigCommerce Workflow and Order Webhook indicators are green. If not, click Create Template or Create Webhook to provision them.

6. Diagnostic Tools

The Debug tab surfaces everything you need for troubleshooting or support:

  • Support Information: Copy the block containing Store Hash, Template ID, Webhook status, Admin Email, and timestamps.
  • Webhook Payloads: Review raw JSON from BigCommerce to confirm all expected fields (customer group, shipping method, totals) are arriving correctly.

7. How Approval Flow Works

  1. New order → webhook fires → ApproveThis ingests payload
  2. Workflow steps evaluated in order; matching steps generate requests
  3. Approver clicks Approve (continues) or Deny (stops)
  4. On final approval, the mapped “Approved” status is sent to BigCommerce; on denial, the “Denied” status is applied

Approvals are sequential and first-response wins for multi-approver steps.

8. Troubleshooting Tips

  • No requests appear: Verify the workflow is toggled On in Settings and that you’re listed as an approver for a matching step.
  • Orders never reach the queue: Check the Debug tab for missing webhook payloads and recreate the webhook if needed.
  • Statuses not updating: Confirm both Workflow template and Webhook indicators are green; click Create Template / Create Webhook again if they’re red.