Document Approvals

Upload a document to a client's document list, then click "Request Client Approval." The client gets notified immediately and the document appears in their portal, ready for review.

It takes two clicks from your side. No downloading, no attaching to emails, no chasing — just upload and request. Prefer it to reach them at a more sensible hour? You can schedule the request for a date and time instead of sending it there and then.

Documents also have a portal visibility toggle — only documents marked as visible in the client portal can be sent for approval. This gives you full control over what clients see before you involve them.

Work rarely produces exactly one document. Select several in the client's document list and request approval for all of them at once — then choose how the client should handle them:

• Together — one request covering every document. The client approves or rejects the lot in a single decision, which is what you want when a VAT return and its transaction list only make sense side by side.
• Separately — a request per document, sent at the same time. Each one is approved, rejected and chased on its own, so a query about the management accounts doesn't hold up the sign-off on the tax computation.

Either way it's one action from your side, and the audit trail records each document's outcome individually.

Clients receive a secure link by email and can review the document, then approve or reject it with optional notes explaining their decision. No account, no password, no portal signup required.

If you use the client portal, pending approvals also appear front and centre on the portal home page. But the email link means every client can respond, regardless of whether they've signed up.

The whole process is self-service. Clients handle it on their own time, and you get notified the moment they respond.

Approvals work in both directions. When clients upload documents via the portal, your team reviews them before they're filed. Staff can approve or reject client-uploaded documents, keeping quality control in your hands.

This means nothing gets filed into your document management system without someone on your team signing off first.

Every approval action is recorded with a full audit trail — who requested it, who approved or rejected it, when they did it, their IP address, and any notes they left. You always know exactly what happened and when.

Sodium can automatically chase clients who haven't responded to an approval request. As with everything else, you're in full control — configure the content of the chase email and how often it goes out, so the tone and cadence match how you'd normally follow up.

Chasing stops automatically as soon as the client approves or rejects the document, so nobody gets a reminder once they've responded.

Document approvals work alongside document management, document requests, and the client portal to give you a complete document workflow. Request documents from clients, share documents for approval, and keep everything organised — all without leaving Sodium.

And when a document doesn't need sign-off, you can notify the client instead — the same secure email link, without asking them to approve anything.