Why Are Approvals Important?

Approving audits matters because the information in it isn't included in your reports and dashboards until the approval is complete. It’s also important that audits are approved in a timely manner because audits aren’t emailed to franchisees until they are in the approved state. 

Types of Approvals 

There are both Automatic Approvals, where Approvals are done with no manual input from an audit manager, or Manual Approvals, where an audit manager reviews audits before they are seen by anyone else. 

Automatic Approvals are more efficient and take less effort to complete from a franchisor standpoint. Many franchisors using the FranchiseBlast system choose to go this route. See how to set up automatic approvals.

Manual Approvals are a safeguard for the franchisor, because you want to make sure that franchisees only see audits that have the audit manager's "stamp of approval" instead of one that may contain inconsistencies or errors. See how to set up manual approvals.

Automatic Approvals

For ease of reporting and efficiency, many systems on FranchiseBlast auto-approve audits. Learn about how to automatically approve questionnaires in the questionnaire settings article.

Manual Approvals

Users with this Ability

Only users with StoreAuditorApprover  permissions can do this. If you need to change your permission status, please contact support@franchiseblast.com.

Accessing Audits Waiting for Approval

Once an audit has been submitted, it is listed as Completed, and the person responsible for approving audits will normally receive an email notification with a link to approve the audit. For flexibility, others are able to receive these notifications as well if needed.  To see the completed audits, do the following. 

Go to Collaboration > Field Audits.

Once you select the Audit tab, you see a list of audits in the stages: Planned, Started. Click the x next to those, then choose Completed in the dropdown.

Now select the audit you’d like to approve by clicking on it. Then you will view a screen similar to the one below, with the audit showing as Completed. 

As you scroll down this page you'll see the store, the auditor and the date of the audit. We also see the location where the audit was submitted from. You can also use the Show Executive Summary button to show the Top Level Section Scores, the questions that failed or need improvement, and the tasks that were assigned as shown in the screen below. To get out of that view, click onto Show Details.

Completing the Approval Process

Once we've reviewed the Audit and created the tasks, we can decide to approve or refuse the audit. We'll do this at the top of the page To approve the audit, select Approved. Once approved , if configured by your FranchiseBlast Administrator, the Franchisee will automatically receive an email letting them know there is a new audit in the system. By default this email contains a link so that the Franchisee can log in and you can track how many times they view the audit.

After clicking approve, you will be prompted to review tasks associated with the audit. 

Note, that if you do not approve the tasks, they will not appear to the people assigned to them.

• Yes, approve all tasks means that the tasks associated with the audit will be marked as New. 
• No, leave them unapproved means that the tasks associated with the audit will not be marked as New 
• Let me review them means you have a chance to review the tasks (see below) 

If you choose to review them, you will have an opportunity to approve the ones that you think are appropriate, by marking them as New. 

Want to learn about notifications?

If you are an administrator and want to learn more about managing notifications in your organization, read the article on notifying people of completed audits here. If you do not have this permission, please contact your administrator. 

Need more help?

Feel free to contact us at support@franchiseblast.com with any questions.