Internal Requests: Move From WhatsApp to Clear Approvals

Why do internal requests get lost in WhatsApp groups and on paper?

They get lost because a chat or a sheet of paper records that someone asked and rarely shows who has to decide next. A leave request posted in a branch group sits between delivery photos and voice notes. By the next morning it has scrolled out of sight, and the manager who read it on the way into a meeting may never come back to it.

Paper fails differently. The form exists in one place, so it waits on a desk while the approver travels, and nobody in another office can see where it is. At month end, accounts receives a pile of expense claims and has to chase the receipts that went missing along the way.

WhatsApp also makes a weak record. It offers disappearing messages with timers of 24 hours, 7 days and 90 days, so in a group that uses them, an approval can vanish before anyone needs to look it up.

The same symptoms tend to show up in both cases:

Staff ask the same manager three times because they cannot tell whether the request was seen.
Similar requests get different answers, depending on who happened to read the group that day.
A request stops moving when the manager goes on leave, and nobody knows it is waiting.
Private details, such as a medical reason or a request for a salary advance, end up in front of the whole group.
When the owner asks how much was approved last quarter, someone has to rebuild the answer from screenshots and folders.

Which requests should you move first?

Move the requests you receive most often and the ones that involve money. In many companies that means leave, expense claims and purchase requests, which is why this guide uses them as examples.

Leave rare requests for later. A form for something that happens twice a year can wait until staff trust the first three.

Spend an hour with the people who handle requests today and go through the last month of chats, folders and paper. For each request type, write the answers below on one page. That page becomes your design document, and it often exposes a disagreement, such as two managers who each thought the other signed off on travel.

Who asks, and whether they sit at a desk, work in a branch or spend the day in the field.
Who decides today and who should decide. These are often different people.
What the decision maker needs to see before saying yes or no.
What happens after approval: who updates the leave balance, who pays the claim and who places the order.

What should each request form ask?

Each form should ask only what the approver needs to decide and what the next person needs to act. GOV.UK's guidance on structuring forms offers a test worth borrowing: keep a question only if you can say why you need the information, what you will do with it and how you will check it is accurate. It calls this list a question protocol, and points out that it gives you a way to push back on unnecessary questions.

Use lists in place of free text wherever accounts or HR will later sort by the answer. A category typed by hand comes back as "fuel", "petrol" and "car", and the monthly report stops adding up. Require an attachment only where a missing one would block the decision, and keep instructions short. GOV.UK says people are unlikely to read help text longer than three lines.

Take care with personal details. SDAIA's guidance on the Saudi Personal Data Protection Law says collection should be limited to the minimum needed for the stated purpose. In practice, a sick employee should not have to type a diagnosis into a form when a medical report sent to HR is enough, and only the people handling that request should see the report. Confirm your obligations with a legal adviser, including what applies in Jordan and Iraq.

Start with these fields, then remove what you can:

Leave request: leave type, first and last day, who covers the work while the employee is away, and the remaining balance if your system can show it.
Expense claim: date, amount, currency, category, business reason and a photo of the receipt. Add the customer or project only if accounts will use it.
Purchase request: item, quantity, estimated cost, reason, date needed and supplier if known, plus a quote once the amount passes a limit you set.

What do leave rules in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Iraq mean for your form?

They mean one set of leave numbers will not work everywhere, because entitlements change with the country and with length of service. If you employ people in more than one country, set up a separate balance rule for each, and allow a balance to change when an employee reaches a service milestone.

Sick leave usually needs its own path, because the pay and the paperwork differ from annual leave. In Saudi Arabia, Etqan Law Firm also notes that leave dues are paid in advance, so an approved annual leave request should reach payroll before the leave starts.

The figures below come from secondary summaries: a law firm for Saudi Arabia, a Norwegian Refugee Council guide dated February 2023 for Jordan and WageIndicator for Iraq. Labor rules change and contracts can add to them, so have a labor adviser confirm the current position before you set any balance.

Saudi Arabia: at least 21 days of paid annual leave a year, rising to 30 after five consecutive years with the same employer. Sick leave can reach 120 days in a year counted from the first sick leave: 30 at full pay, 60 at three quarters of the wage and 30 unpaid.
Jordan: 14 days of annual leave a year, rising to 21 after five consecutive years with the same employer, and pro rata for those with less than a year. Sick leave is 14 days a year on full pay based on a medical report approved by the workplace, with a possible further 14 days for hospital stays, on conditions that depend on company size.
Iraq: after one year of service, at least 21 days of paid leave a year, or at least 30 for hazardous, strenuous or harmful work, with extra days for long service. Leave can be split as long as one part is at least 14 consecutive days, and unused days are paid in cash when the contract ends. If you operate in the Kurdistan Region, ask your adviser which law applies.

How do you design an approval route that does not stall?

Give each request type the fewest steps that still protect the company, and assign each step to a role. Every extra approver adds a queue, so ask what each person checks that the previous one did not. If nobody can say, remove the step. Naming a role such as line manager, in place of a person, means the route survives when someone changes jobs.

A common leave route runs from the employee to the line manager, then to HR to update the balance. An expense claim goes from the employee to the line manager, then to accounts to check the receipt and pay. A purchase request goes from the requester to the budget owner, then to whoever places the order, with a senior manager added above your limit.

Money needs one firm rule: separate the jobs. The University of Edinburgh's finance guidance says the person who requisitions a purchase should not approve it, and the person who approves it should not authorize payment. Michigan Technological University's internal audit team adds that whoever approves a transaction must have the authority to do so, which is the reason to keep a written list of who can approve what and up to which amount.

Small companies often cannot split those jobs. Edinburgh's answer is a detailed supervisory review when functions cannot be separated. The Illinois State Board of Education, writing for school districts with limited staff, suggests rotating roles and using outside auditors for periodic review. For an owner-run business, that could mean your accountant reviews the owner's expenses every month.

Settle these rules before launch:

Limits: set amount bands for expenses and purchases, with higher approval for larger amounts. The Illinois guidance also suggests competitive quotes above a threshold.
Self-approval: nobody approves their own request. When a manager submits one, it goes to that manager's manager.
Low-risk requests: decide which ones need no review, such as a salary certificate, and let them approve automatically.
Deputies: name a substitute for each approver, because a route that depends on one person stops when that person travels.
Time targets: decide how long each step may take and who hears about it when the time runs out.
Return or reject: a returned request goes back to be fixed and resubmitted, while a rejected one has a final answer and a reason.

How should staff track the status of a request?

Staff should be able to open a request and see its status and the person it is waiting on, without asking anyone. That is what stops the follow-up messages in the group.

Separate approved from completed. An approved expense claim that has not been paid is still an open matter for the employee who spent the money.

Managers need only a few numbers each month: open requests per approver, the oldest open request, the time spent at each step and how often requests get returned. A high return rate usually points to an unclear form, so fix the form before you blame the staff.

Keep the records too. The Illinois guidance lists retaining requisitions, invoices and receiving reports as an audit trail for future audits. Set a retention period for each request type with your accountant or legal adviser, because SDAIA's guidance also says personal data should be kept only as long as the purpose needs it or the law requires.

Keep the list of statuses short and let each one mean one thing:

Draft: started and not yet sent.
In review: waiting on a named approver.
Returned: back with the requester, with a note on what to fix.
Approved: the decision is yes, and the next person has work to do.
Rejected: the decision is no, with a reason.
Completed: the work is done, whether that means the balance is updated, the claim is paid or the order is placed.

How do you roll this out so staff use it?

Run a pilot with one department, fix what breaks, then set a firm date for everyone else. Most of the effort goes into habits, because people will keep posting in the group for as long as posting in the group works.

Prosci's ADKAR model is a handy checklist for where people get stuck. It names five stages: awareness of why the change is needed, desire to take part, knowledge of how to do it, the ability to put it into practice, and reinforcement to prevent backsliding. Here, reinforcement depends mostly on managers. If a manager approves one request in the group, staff learn that the group still works.

A plan that suits a small or mid-sized company looks like this:

Have the owner or general manager explain the reason in one short message, in the languages your staff use.
Write the rule in one sentence: a request counts once it is submitted on the form.
Train approvers first, since staff will bring them the first questions.
Pilot one request type with one department or branch for two to four weeks, on the phones that field staff carry.
Ask the pilot group what confused them and what they had to type twice, then change the form.
Announce a cutover date, decide what happens to requests already in progress and stop accepting paper after that date.
Give managers a standard reply for requests that arrive in chat: a polite line and the link to the form.
Allow for real urgency. If someone has to say yes by phone, the request still goes on the form by the next working day.
Add the next request type once the first one runs without chasing, and review the monthly numbers as you go.

How does Repzo handle internal requests?

Internal requests in Repzo Workstation is built for HR, IT, finance and operations teams. It handles HR, IT, finance, facility, travel, document and fully custom requests, including leave, reimbursement, onboarding and asset requests.

You can start from one of ten built-in system templates or build a request type yourself. Admins add custom fields, sections and validation rules in a drag-and-drop builder without custom code, and staff submit structured form data with attachments.

Each request type can require an approval workflow, auto-approve when no review is needed or follow a draft-based submission flow. Employees can see status, ownership and approval progress, and the team tracks approvals, updates and final outcomes from one queue. Past requests stay available as searchable records.

Workstation also has role-based access by team, role and record, and an exportable audit trail of who changed what. Repzo is available in Arabic and English.

Requests from people outside the company are a different job, handled by online forms, which feed submissions into the CRM. Customer conversations on WhatsApp belong in a shared inbox.

If your process depends on something specific, such as routing by amount or substitute approvers, ask our sales team to walk through it using one of your real requests before you decide.

Frequently asked questions

Can staff still use WhatsApp for internal requests?

They can use it for questions and reminders. The request and the decision should sit on the form, so there is one record. A manager can share the form link in the group and reply with the same link whenever a request arrives in chat.

Is a shared spreadsheet enough?

It can be enough for a small company with one approver. A spreadsheet logs requests, but someone still has to move each one along and tell staff where it stands. Once you have several branches or more than one approver, or staff keep asking about status, it has probably stopped working.

How many approval levels should a request have?

As few as the risk allows. Many leave requests need one manager and an HR check of the balance, while purchases may need another level above a limit you set. If a step adds no check of its own, remove it.

Who approves the owner's or a manager's own requests?

Someone other than the person asking. A manager's request goes to that manager's manager. When the owner is at the top of the route, a partner or the company's accountant can review those items in detail on a regular schedule.

What should happen when an approver is away?

The request should go to a deputy named in advance, with authority up to an agreed limit. Decide this before launch, because a route that waits for one person's return brings back the delays you were trying to remove.

How long should we keep request records?

It depends on the record and the country. SDAIA's guidance says personal data should be kept only as long as its purpose needs or the law requires, and tax and labor rules may set their own periods. Ask your accountant or legal adviser to set a period for each request type.