Advanced Approvals

The article provides a guide on creating custom approval paths within an organization, particularly for specific departments, divisions, or locations. It emphasizes the importance of managing approvals as a company grows and outlines the steps to establish approval workflows for various requests, including information updates and time off. The content includes a table of contents and detailed instructions for setting up approval settings and advanced approvals. Users are guided on selecting divisions for approval paths, determining who can make requests and who can approve them. The article concludes by noting that once a custom approval path is created, users may add additional paths for other divisions while maintaining the original approval workflow.

  • Apr 27, 2026
  • Knowledge

Title
Advanced Approvals
Article Text
This feature is included in the Core, Pro, and Elite packages.

How do I create an approval path for a specific department, division, or location?

Purpose: As your organization grows, HR functions become increasingly complex. We want to make it easy for you to manage approvals within your company. This help guide will show you how you can create a custom approval path for employees in a specific department, division, or location.

Table of Contents

Approvals Settings

If you have not created any of your approval workflows yet, check out our help guides for creating information update approvals, time off approvals, or custom approvals before you set up your advanced approvals.

You can create an advanced approval workflow for any approval in BambooHR, including information updates, time off requests, and custom approvals.

Click an approval workflow you would like to assign to a new approval path, then click the action menu in the top right corner and select Advanced Approvals.

Advanced Approvals

You can create an approval path based on a department, division, or location. Also, you can set up each approval workflow (information updates, time off requests, and custom approvals) with a different approval path type.

Select which type of approval path you would like to create. In this example, we will create an approval path based on a division. Click Save.

Approval Paths by Division

  1. Choose a Division: Select which division(s) you would like to apply to your new approval path. In this example, we are going to select the Europe division. However, you can select multiple divisions if needed. Click Apply.
  2. All Other Divisions: When you create an approval path, the original approval workflow you set up will show at the bottom. At first, this will include all employees in all divisions. As you create a custom approval path for a division, it will remove employees from the All Other Divisions approval path.

Create an approval path for the Europe division.

  1. Who can make this type of request?: Your selection will determine who can make a specific request for employees within the division. Click here to see a list of available options for requesters.
  2. Who can approve these requests?: Your selection will determine who can approve a specific request for employees within the division. Click here to see a list of available options for approvers.

Click Save Changes to save the new approval path.

Once you have created your first approval path, you can add a new division approval path for a different division. Or, you can keep all other divisions in the original approval path at the bottom.

In the screenshot above, notice that Europe is not showing in the All Other Divisions Approval Path because we have created a custom approval path for the Europe division.

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