Write down what can go out without you

There are two kinds of owner. One approves everything: every quote, every supplier order, every reply to a customer complaint. The business waits for them, and when they travel it stops. The other approves almost nothing, trusts the team, and finds out about the discount that should never have been given when the month's numbers come in.

Most owners are both, depending on the day.

The fix is not a new tool. It is a short written list of what may go out without the owner, under what limits, decided once and dated.

How we do it

At Provecta Group the default is strict. Any message that leaves the company on our behalf, whether drafted by a person or an AI agent, waits for a yes before it goes. That rule sits in the company memory that every person and every AI session reads first.

Underneath it is a short list of exceptions. Each one is a routine action that is safe to let run, written as a standing approval. This week we added one: replies inside an existing conversation, to people who have already written back to us, can go out without a fresh approval each time. The exception names what it still may not do on its own. No prices. No contract terms. No legal questions. Anything in those areas is held for a person.

Every exception carries the same four things:

1. What exactly is approved. Narrow and specific.
2. The limits. What it must never include, and when it must stop and hold.
3. Who approved it and when. A name in our internal record, and a date.
4. The reason. Why this action is safe enough to run without a fresh yes each time.

Everything not on the list still waits.

Why it has to be written

Unwritten standing approvals are where most trouble starts. "She usually lets me send those" turns into "I thought I could send this one too". A written exception has edges. Anyone reading it, or any AI agent loading it, can see where the approval ends.

Writing it down also makes it reviewable. Once a quarter you can read the list and ask whether each exception still makes sense. An exception nobody can find cannot be reviewed.

For AI agents this matters more than for people. An agent has no sense of what its manager would probably be fine with. It either has an approval or it does not, and it needs to read the boundary in the same place every time.

What it looks like outside an office

The same approach works on a building site, in a clinic, in a workshop or behind a shop counter. A few examples of what a standing approval might look like in businesses we talk to. These are illustrations, not real clients:

• A site supervisor may reorder consumables from the approved supplier list, up to an amount the owner sets, without calling. Anything else, or anything above that amount, needs a call first.
• The front desk may confirm or move appointments within the same week. Cancellations with a fee need the manager.
• The workshop may quote standard repairs from the price sheet. Any discount, any non-standard job, goes to the owner.
• An AI assistant on the business's WhatsApp may answer opening hours, location and how to book. Anything about price, complaints or refunds is passed to a person.

Notice that each one names both what is allowed and where the line is. The line is the important part.

Where it can go wrong

A standing approval is only as good as its limits. Write them too loosely and you have given away the decision you meant to keep. Write too many exceptions and you are back to approving nothing.

It also depends on people and agents actually reading it. For a person, that means it lives somewhere they look, not in a folder from onboarding. For an AI agent, it means the list is loaded every time it acts, not pasted into one conversation months ago.

And it is not a control by itself. If an agent is allowed to quote standard prices, something should still stop it quoting a non-standard one: a price list it cannot edit, or a check on every quote it sends.

Write your first three this week

Look at last week's messages and requests that waited on you. Find three that you approved without changing anything. Those are your candidates. For each, write the four parts above on one line. Share the page with your team and tell them that anything not on it still comes to you.

The operations drag check helps find where approvals are slowing your business down. Book 20 minutes at pgco.world/book.