Approval Entitlements Overview

Purpose

Approval Entitlements lets a lender set a dollar-amount threshold — or an unlimited entitlement — for each user, defining the maximum draw amount that user is authorized to approve. When a workflow transition requires entitlement coverage, a draw is blocked at that status until one of its existing approvers has a cap covering the full draw amount. Before Approval Entitlements, there was no way to check whether the person approving a draw actually had the authority to do so — anyone could approve any draw regardless of size.

Key Features

1. Per-user approval caps: Admins set a dollar cap for each user, or mark them Unlimited, from Organization Settings.

2. Entitlement visibility on the draw: Each required approver's cap is shown directly on the draw's Approvals tab, and in the picker when adding a new approver, so admins can pick someone whose cap actually covers the draw. This visibility doesn't depend on whether the draw's current transition actually enforces coverage — the column and cap values appear whenever Approval Entitlements is turned on for the organization, even on transitions where enforcement isn't required.

3. No required approval order: Any authorized approver can approve at any time — coverage is only checked at the moment someone tries to advance the draw.

Target Users

Lending organizations using draw workflows. System Administrators configure and activate entitlements for their organization's users. Draw Admins step in when a draw is blocked on coverage — using the caps shown on the Approvals tab and New Approval picker to add someone whose entitlement covers the full amount.

How It Works

Step-by-Step Instructions:

1. To configure a user’s entitlement, go to Organization Settings > Customization > Approval Entitlements and set each user's Entitlement Condition to Draw Amount with a dollar cap (e.g., $5,000,000.00), or mark them Unlimited. At least one user must be set to Unlimited before Approval Entitlements can be activated for the organization — without one, activation will fail.

   

2. To turn on entitlement enforcement for draws, go to Organization Settings > Workflows, edit the Draw workflow, and open a transition. Under the 0 Outstanding Approvals condition, check "Validate all approvals have the appropriate approval entitlements. If not, the draw transition cannot be completed." to require coverage on that transition. This is set per transition, so lenders can enforce entitlements on some workflow steps and not others.

   

3. On a draw, any assigned approver can click Approve at any time from the Approvals tab — there's no primary or secondary approver, and the entitlement column shows each required approver's cap (e.g., "Draw Amount: $5,000,000.00" or "Unlimited"). Keep in mind this column shows up whenever the feature is enabled for the organization — it doesn't mean this specific transition enforces coverage; check the transition's setting (step 2) to confirm whether it's actually required here.

   

4. Entitlement coverage doesn't replace the normal approval requirement — it's an additional check layered on top of it. To advance the draw, both must be true: every required approver has signed off (zero outstanding approvals), and at least one of those approvals came from someone whose entitlement covers the full draw amount (the total draw amount, not the disbursement amount). If either condition isn't met, the transition is blocked with a clear error, and a Draw Admin must add an approver with sufficient coverage before retrying.

Note:

• Caps don't stack. One approver must individually cover the full draw amount — two approvers with smaller caps (e.g., $1M and $3M) won't clear a $9M draw. A Draw Admin would need to add an approver whose cap covers the full amount.

• Changing the draw amount doesn’t currently reset or invalidate approvals that were already recorded.

Benefits

• Prevents a draw from advancing until someone with real authority over that dollar amount has approved it — unless a user with the appropriate override permission manually clears the rule.

• Flexible per-user caps, including Unlimited, instead of a one-size-fits-all approval rule.

• Enforcement can be turned on for specific workflow transitions only, so it doesn't have to apply everywhere at once.

• Approvers' caps are visible right on the draw, so Draw Admins can pick the right approver without guesswork.

Best Practices

• Caps do not stack. One approver alone must cover the full draw amount — two $5M approvers do not cover a $9M draw.

• Remember that entitlement coverage is checked against the total draw amount (Current Payment Due), not the disbursement amount.

• Updating or removing a user's entitlement takes effect immediately for all future approval actions — on in-progress and new draws alike — but it is not retroactive; approvals already recorded before the change stay valid.

• A user with no entitlement configured is treated as having $0 coverage: their approval still registers, but doesn't count toward the coverage check on its own.

• An entitlement of $0 isn't a valid configured value — a user who shouldn't approve anything simply shouldn't be added as an approver.

• Entitlement changes take effect immediately — but the Rules tab may not refresh to reflect it right away, especially after a draw's amount changes or a user's entitlement is edited. Navigate away and back, take another draw action, or retry the transition to force it to re-evaluate.

• A separate permission lets certain users manually override the Approval Entitlements rule on the Rules tab, bypassing the coverage check entirely. Because this has real control and compliance implications, restrict that permission to only the users who should be able to bypass entitlement enforcement.