Review workflow dates and approval checkpoints

Use Automations when a saved sequence needs to wait for a specific event, stop for your approval, or move an inquiry to a pipeline stage. The rules belong to the published version; changing a draft never changes an existing run.

Choose the right kind of time

Wait measures elapsed hours from reaching the step. Wait for a record date uses one of four sources:

• The contact’s event date, treated as a calendar date rather than midnight in your current browser timezone.
• One selected appointment’s start. Its recorded timezone must identify an unambiguous instant.
• One selected fully executed agreement. A partial signer response is insufficient; voiding the selected agreement invalidates the wait.
• One selected positive principal payment receipt. Tips alone, a historical paid flag, a correction and a refund do not count as that payment source. A clerical correction to the original receipt requires review.

A calendar-day rule pins its own IANA timezone and local clock time. For example, seven days before an event at 09:00 in America/Los_Angeles remains a local morning across daylight-saving transitions. An elapsed-minute rule, available for sources with an exact instant, measures a fixed duration instead. A local clock time that is missing or occurs twice holds; publish a new version with an unambiguous time rather than assuming which occurrence was intended.

Select records deliberately

Under Start for a lead, use Select date sources, if used to choose the appointment, agreement or receipt. Each choice is limited to that contact or its project in your current workspace. The list shows up to 100 recent records of each kind. A missing source does not prevent saving the workflow, but the real run stops when it reaches that wait.

An appointment-booked or agreement-signed trigger can carry its own exact originating record. An invoice-paid event does not guess which receipt should anchor the wait. Review and select the receipt when the run asks for it.

Lead workflows use the contact’s event date. Project workflows use the current project date. Date changes in either source hold an already waiting run for review.

Review a changed or overdue deadline

A waiting run retains both its source fingerprint and resolved UTC deadline. Rescheduling an appointment, changing the contact date, correcting a payment receipt or voiding an agreement creates an information hold. An agreement’s successor is never selected automatically.

Open the run’s Review this date wait section. Choose the correct source, preview the previous and proposed deadline, and enter a reason. Approve the exact source and deadline. If it has already passed, separately allow immediate continuation. That permission can lead directly to later configured actions, including an already-approved automatic email step; inspect the remaining version before allowing it.

The action checks the run revision and current source again. If either changed after the preview, review again. Its history records the old and new date snapshot. Repeating the same request does not add another change. Earlier steps are not rerun.

Add a real approval checkpoint

Request explicit approval freezes its rendered title and content when the run reaches it. The run then waits; it cannot continue through a generic resume, artifact edit or dismissal. Read the saved checkpoint, enter a reason, and use Approve the exact checkpoint below & continue, or cancel the remaining run.

Approval is a private operational decision, not a client signature, payment authorization or guarantee that later dynamic contact fields are unchanged. Subsequent actions still enforce their own recipient, permission, source and stop checks. Drafts produced earlier retain their own separate review.

Move an inquiry through a pipeline

Change pipeline stage targets an actual stage selected from an active workspace pipeline. Saving the draft pins its stable stage identity, displayed name and booking meaning. Renaming a stage does not redirect the action; archiving it causes a hold. The same step cannot create two stage transitions after a retry.

A stage whose meaning is Won or Lost may activate the version’s closed-lead stop rule before the next step. Rehearse that path deliberately. A workflow stage change does not create a contract, charge a card or make a calendar booking.

The builder includes a visual canvas, branch connections, reviewed SMS steps and condition waits for current stage, tag or email fields. General workflow controls are covered in Rehearse and control workflows.