I’ve been mapping out how approvals, handoffs, and sign-offs are handled across industries. The spreadsheet remains central — and that’s not the problem. The real issue is the messy, manual way we track approvals:

- "Looks good to me.”
- "Can you confirm cell D42 was updated?”
- "Endless version-hunting and email threads.”

Here are just a few of the most common spreadsheet-based approval workflows I’ve seen — and why they still persist:

1. Budget / Forecast Approvals (Finance / FP&A)

- Model gets routed → Budget Owner → Analyst →  VP Finance → CFO
-  Final budget version sign-off
- Still in spreadsheets: Custom logic, many cooks in the kitchen, constant tweaks

2. CapEx Request Trackers (Real Estate / Construction)

- Site leads enter CapEx requests → Corporate reviews line items
- Approving individual capital requests
- Still in spreadsheets: Flexibility, comments, data handling

3. Loan Approval & Underwriting (Banking / Real Estate)

- Analysts model deal terms → Credit committee review, managing director
- Deal-by-deal loan or valuation sign-off
- Still in spreadsheets: Bespoke assumptions, every deal is unique

4. Revenue Recognition (Accounting / SaaS)

- Rev rec schedules are reviewed monthly
- Sign-off per contract/client
- Still in spreadsheets: ERPs aren’t flexible or traceable enough

5. Commission Payouts (Sales Ops / Finance)

- Deal-level commissions → VP Sales/CFO approval
- Final payout confirmation
- Still in spreadsheets: Each comp plan is different

6. Vendor Payments & Reimbursements (Ops / Admin)

- Team submits invoices or expenses
- Manager sign-off
- Still in spreadsheets: Simpler than full-blown expense software

Instead of scattered emails and vague approvals, teams should be using Rockhopper to centralize and streamline this process.

✅ Assign cell-level approvals
✅ Track who approved what and when
✅ Create a single source of truth — with no more missed details or broken version control

Spreadsheets are here to stay. The chaos around them doesn’t have to be. If you're ready to make a change to your spreadsheets, book a demo today.