Can Jira do a manager approval, then Finance, then a director? comes up in the forums almost every week. The honest answer is "it depends on your plan and your space type", so here's the map we wish we'd had when we started, plus the questions worth asking before you build anything.
1. Jira Service Management (any plan)
JSM has had approvals for years. You add an approval step to a workflow status, point it at a user picker or group picker field (the usual Approvers / Approver groups), say how many people need to approve, and pick which transition runs on Approve and on Decline. You can also exclude people, for example so the reporter can't approve their own request.
Multi-level = one status per level. Waiting for manager → Waiting for Finance → Waiting for director, each with its own approval step. Automation can fill each level's approvers as the request moves along.
Good to know: there's no built-in delegation or "backup approver" for when someone is on holiday, and deadlines or reminders are something you build yourself with Automation.
2. Jira Software and Jira Business, Premium and Enterprise
Since October 2025 the same model exists outside JSM, on Premium and Enterprise: an approval step on a status in the new workflow editor, approvers from a user or group picker field (global context), "everyone" or "a specific number of people", and exclusions. It started in company-managed spaces, and the February 2026 announcement extends it to team-managed. See Set up approval steps and the announcement.
Multi-level works the same way as in JSM: one status per level.
3. Jira Software and Business on Free or Standard
No native approvals here, but there's a pattern that holds up:
- A status per level (Awaiting TSO, Awaiting PMA…) with Approve / Reject transitions out of it.
- A group picker field, e.g. Approver group, and a Restrict transition rule on those transitions so only members of that group see the buttons (the old User Is In Group Custom Field condition).
- An Automation rule per level: on entering the status, set Approver group and send a customized email to that group.
- Lock the field: keep Approver group off the edit screen, or people can approve their own work.
The catch: whoever clicks first decides. There's no "2 of 5" or "everyone in Legal", and the record is the work item history, not an approval log.
4. Where the "one status per level" model gets tight
It works well for two or three fixed levels. These are the requests where we've seen it strain:
- Parallel sign-off. Security and Legal at the same time, both needed before Finance. A work item has one status at a time, so you end up with sub-tasks or a combined step.
- Rules other than "N people". Majority of a committee, "all of these" plus a veto, or a different rule per level.
- Approvers you can't put in a picker field. A project role, the manager stored in Assets, or "up to 1,000 the team lead, above that Finance".
- Absence. Approvals stall when one person is on holiday and there's no delegate.
- Deadlines. "Escalate to the director if nobody decides in 24 h."
- Workflow sprawl. Every new level or process adds statuses and transitions that someone has to maintain.
If none of these apply to you, stick with the native options above. They're solid, and they're one less thing to manage.
5. Questions to answer before you build
- Which plan and space type are you on? That decides what's native.
- How many levels, and are any of them parallel?
- Per level: one person, N of M, majority, all, veto?
- Where do approvers come from: fixed people, a group, a field, a role, Assets?
- What happens when someone is away, or nobody decides in time?
- Who needs to see the evidence later (auditors, customers on a portal)?
Answer these first and the tool choice usually picks itself.
Where our app fits
Full disclosure: I work for Smiling Monkey, the company that built Quorum Approvals for Jira. We built it for the cases in section 4. One rule per process instead of one status per approver: sequential stages and parallel branches; any one, N of M, majority, all or veto per step; approvers from groups, people, fields, project roles, Assets or amount ranges; delegation, deadlines with escalation, and a workflow validator that keeps the transition closed until the rule is met. It works on any plan, in Jira and JSM, and runs on Atlassian.
How are you handling multi-level approvals today, and which of the cases in section 4 bites you most? Happy to dig into specific setups in the comments.😊
