How rejection resets the approval flow

What rejection does to earlier approvals

When an approver rejects a document, the rejection does not just stop the current step — it resets every approval that came before it in the flow.

If a document has passed through three groups and is rejected at the fourth, all three earlier approvals are cleared. When the bookkeeper corrects the document and re-sends it to approval, the document starts the entire flow again from the beginning.

Why this matters

Rejection is a strong action. A rejection from late in the flow undoes work done earlier. This is intentional: if something is wrong enough that a later approver cannot approve it, the earlier groups should also re-review the corrected version.

This means:

Approvers earlier in the flow will see the document again after the bookkeeper re-sends it.
The rejection reason travels with the document (when the “Rejected documents requires note” setting is on), so the bookkeeper knows what to fix.
The full cycle is: bookkeeper sends → approvers approve in sequence → one approver rejects with a note → all approvals reset → bookkeeper sees rejection reason → bookkeeper corrects → bookkeeper re-sends → full approval cycle starts again.

Keeping rejections useful

Because rejection has a cascading effect, it is important that rejectors always include a clear note explaining the problem. Without a note, the bookkeeper and earlier approvers have no context for what needs to change.

The Rejected documents requires note setting enforces this at the platform level.