Client approvals on a board

Sharing a board shows the client the work. Approvals ask them to commit to it — item by item, with a record of who said yes to what and when. It's the difference between "they seemed to like the chairs" and a sign-off you can order against.

Turning approvals on

Approvals are per board. Open Share in the board's top bar and pick Enable client approvals. Once it's on, the menu item reads Client approvals on.

Share the board as usual (the message field is a good place to say what you need: "tap any item to approve or leave a note"). In the portal, the client sees the board under Library, and each item on it can now be approved or declined.

Approvals are worth turning on when the board is a decision — the sofa, the stone, the lighting package. For a pure inspiration board, leave them off; asking someone to approve a mood is how you get silence.

What the client does

The client opens the board in their portal, works down the items, and for each one either approves it or declines it with a note. They don't need a password: portal access is a magic link, and approvers who only ever get an emailed request can act from that link alone — see Sharing the client portal with a client.

Their decisions also surface in the portal's Approvals tab, so nothing depends on them finding the original board again.

Watching the responses

Back in the editor, the board's top bar keeps a live tally: how many items are approved, how many declined, and how many are still pending. Click it to open the responses panel and read the notes — the declines are the useful ones, because a decline with "too dark for that wall" is a sourcing instruction, not a rejection.

Activity also lands in the project's feed, so a teammate who wasn't in the thread can see the board moved.

The board locks harder

A shared board is already read-only until you make a revision. A board that's out for approval is stricter still: it stays locked while the client is deciding, so the thing being approved can't shift underneath the approval.

When you need to change something — a decline to act on, a price that moved — click New revision. That gives you an unlocked copy (… rev1.1) to edit and re-share, while the approved decisions stay attached to the version they were made against.

A working rhythm

1. Build the board. Keep it to the decisions you actually need made.
2. Turn on approvals, decide whether prices show, share it with a short message.
3. Let it sit. Chase once, in the portal's message thread rather than email, so the trail stays in one place.
4. Read the declines. Revise. Re-share as rev1.1.
5. Order against what's approved — the item list carries the vendor and price straight from your library.

Related

• Sharing a board with your client
• Design boards: the basics
• How the client portal works