A document is stuck in — or skipped — approval
Work out which of three states a misbehaving document is in — never started approval, waiting on one step, or finished but still in a queue — and fix the one that applies.
Before you begin
- Catalog-administrator access to the document type involved
By the end of this guide you'll know which of three states your document is in — it never entered approval, it's waiting on one step, or it's finished but still showing in a queue — and you'll have fixed the one that applies.
Work the states in order. "Skipped approval" and "stuck in approval" usually come down to the same few causes, and the first check rules out the most common one in under a minute.
First: where is the document right now?
Open Queues from the sidebar. The four tabs — Approval, Work, Signature, Coding — each show a count badge.
| Where the document is | What it means | Go to |
|---|---|---|
| Coding tab | Not filed yet — approval hasn't started, and that's normal | State 1 |
| Filed, but on nobody's Approval tab | The approval process never started | State 1 |
| Approval tab, not moving | Waiting on a specific person or group | State 2 |
| Work tab, long after the work was done | A work-queue item that never expires | State 3 |
State 1: The document never entered approval
Approval processes attach to filed documents. A Coding Queue item is a temporary holding record — its pre-assigned approval processes attach only at the moment it's committed to the catalog, so it will never appear in anyone's Approval Queue before then. When an invoice "bypasses approval," the process almost always never started: the document was filed as a type the process isn't attached to, or the process isn't set to start automatically.
Confirm the document is filed (not on the Coding tab) and note its document type — the type it was actually filed as, not the one you expected.
In catalog administration (Catalogs & Document Types), open that document type's actions menu and choose Approval Processes.
On the Approval Processes page, find the process and confirm Enabled is checked. A disabled process routes nothing.
Open Edit Details and check the box labeled Automatically start this process on all captured content of this document type. If it's unchecked, documents enter this process only when someone starts it manually or a workflow rule starts it.
Approval-Process Details page with the "Enabled" and "Automatically start this process on all captured content of this document type" checkboxes highlighted
To route the skipped document now, open it and use Start Approval Process: pick the Assignment Type, Assign to, and Priority, then click Start Process.
What you should see: if the dialog instead says
No approval processes are configured for this document type, the document was filed under a type with no process at all — that's your mismatch.
Success check: the document appears on the first approver's Approval tab, and the next document of this type filed from the Coding Queue enters approval on its own.
Sending a document to a work queue during coding is a separate routing choice, not an approval substitute. A document can be in an approval process, a work queue, both, or neither.
State 2: It's in approval, but not moving
On the Queues page, click Admin to open the Admin Queue — it shows items across all users for the document types you administer.
Find the document and use View History to see which member (step) it's waiting on.
Work out who that member really is:
Member type Who's holding it Named User That one account — confirm it's still active Group Depends on mode: Multi (all members see it; voting rules decide advancement), Single (one chosen member), Review (two peer-reviewers) Creator Whoever created the document noteA Multi group whose voting rule requires all members stalls completely when one member is away or has left the company.
If the current assignee can act, the fastest fix is for them to approve or reject the item. Seeing
Comments are required for rejection.? That's expected — add the note.
If the assignee can't act (deactivated, departed, on leave), select the item in the Admin Queue, use Remove from Process, then reopen the document and run Start Approval Process again, assigning it to someone who can act.
Success check: View History shows the item moved past the member it was stuck on, or the restarted process appears on the new assignee's Approval tab.
If items keep landing on someone who has left, fix the process itself — edit it and adjust the member list (Remove Member) — or every future document will stall in the same place.
State 3: The work is done, but items keep piling up
An approval item leaves the queue on its own when it passes the last member, is rejected off-process, or is removed. Lingering leftovers are usually on the Work tab, where expiration rules apply.
Check the Work tab's Expiration column. Items assigned with the Never expires switch on stay until someone completes or removes them — over time they accumulate.
For an item that should have a lifespan, use Set Expiration in the Admin Queue and give it an Expiration Time and Expiration Interval (Minute through Year).
When an item's expiration elapses, the system removes it automatically and silently — there's no notification. If the document is also in an approval process, the approval is unaffected.
Group-assigned work items appear to every group member, and the first person to complete one removes it for the whole group. "Stuck for me" is sometimes just "not completed by anyone yet."
Success check: items with expirations set disappear from the Work tab on their own, and the tab's count badge stops growing.
Years of old items? Don't bulk-clean it yourself
Remove from Process and Set Expiration act on items you select — fine for a handful. Safely filtering years of accumulated never-expiring items into "dead" versus "still mid-flight" is hard to get right, and removals can't be undone from the queue. Treat a large historical cleanup as a scoped job: contact Ademero support to arrange it rather than selecting-all in the Admin Queue.
Removing an item from a process can't be undone from the queue — the process must be restarted from the document. Never bulk-remove items you haven't individually confirmed are dead.
Still stuck?
Contact support with this — it's exactly what they need to pick the issue up quickly:
- Catalog name and the document type one affected document was actually filed as
- The process name, and whether Enabled and the auto-start checkbox are checked
- Which tab the document shows on (Approval, Work, Coding) — or none
- The View History output for one example document
- When it started, and what changed around then (new document type, staff change, process edit)