Reviewing & approving your team's work
When a staff member submits a document, it lands with a reviewer for sign-off. This is the supervisor's side of the documentation lifecycle described in How documentation works — here's how reviewing works.
Supervisors approve the work of the staff who report to them. Practice managers approve agency-wide. Admins don't approve clinical documents — their work is on the referral, reporting, and billing side. See Your role in FCR.
Your approval queue
The Approvals page is your queue. It collects everything waiting on you:
- Documents your team has submitted for review.
- Documents you previously sent back for revision (still in the loop until they're resubmitted and approved).
Each item shows what kind of document it is and who submitted it, and links straight to the document so you can review it in context. There's also a quick-look strip on your dashboard that surfaces the same work, so you don't have to go looking.
Scope follows your role: practice managers and admins see the whole agency; a supervisor sees the work of their direct reports. A supervisor with no direct reports yet sees an empty queue.
Approving vs. requesting revision
When you open a submitted document, you have two paths:
- Approve — your official sign-off. The document becomes final.
- Request revision — send it back to the author as an editable draft with your notes on what to change. For several document types you can flag the specific sections that need work, so the author knows exactly where to look.
Approving isn't just a checkmark. For many documents it has downstream effects: approving a progress or visitation note is what makes the contact billable; approving a discharge summary closes the case. Once a document is approved it can't be edited normally — reopening it means requesting revision. Review carefully before you approve.
When you open a monthly report to approve, FCR checks whether any notes in that report's period are still unapproved (draft, submitted, or returned for revision). If there are, a gold notice appears above the approve button telling you how many. It's advisory, not a block — you can approve now and follow up on those notes, or return to them first. The report reflects only approved notes, so this is your heads-up that a straggler might not be included.
You can't approve your own work
To keep review independent, a supervisor can't approve a document they authored — it routes to another supervisor or a practice manager instead. Two points worth knowing:
- Practice managers sit at the top of the agency and can approve their own documents.
- Biopsychosocial assessments are an exception to the self-approval rule: a supervisor or practice manager may approve a BPS they wrote themselves, because the clinical formulation is the author's own to attest.
Whose work you'll see
Your queue is built around who reports to you. If a staff member's documents aren't appearing for you to approve, the usual reason is the reporting relationship — check that the staff member reports to you (practice managers and admins approve agency-wide regardless).
Frequently asked questions
A staff member submitted something but it's not in my queue. Most often the staff member doesn't report to you. Supervisors review their direct reports' work; a practice manager can review anyone's. Confirm the reporting relationship.
I approved something by mistake — can I undo it? Approved documents can't be edited directly. Use Request revision to send it back to the author as a draft, then it goes through review again.
Why can't I see my own submitted note in my approval queue? By design — you can't approve your own work. Another supervisor or a practice manager reviews it.
What does an admin approve? Admins don't approve clinical documents. Their sign-off work is on the referral, monthly-report, and billing side.
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