Spot Bonus Requests: Three Approvals, One Auto-Generated Letter

Status: 81 tests · built May–September 2026 · live, internal
Stack: Next.jspdf-libRipplingSlack Workflow Builder

Dashboard — every bonus request in flight, sorted by where it's stuck.

01 — The problem

A spot bonus had to reach a department head, then Finance, then People Ops, and end with a letter the employee could keep. Approvals were easy to lose track of, and the person who submitted one rarely knew where it stood.

02 — What it does

One form routes a bonus request through three approval stages — department head, then Finance, then People Ops — notifying each approver in Slack as it becomes their turn. On final approval, the app renders a payroll-ready award letter as a PDF in the browser. Amounts can be revised mid-flight without restarting the whole chain, and every change to an amount keeps its own visible history.

03 — Design & technical approach

Self-approval is blocked structurally: if a manager requests a bonus for someone on their own team, the request escalates up the chain instead of allowing a sign-off. Raising an amount after approval routes back to Finance alone, not the full chain, since only Finance's math changes. A resubmission bug that quietly cleared prior approvals (and once deleted an approver's comment) led to a fix where every resubmission starts a fresh review cycle while keeping earlier decisions visible underneath, rather than erasing them.

04 — Outcome & impact

The submitter gets pinged after every decision instead of chasing status by hand. Raising an amount after approval sends the request back to Finance alone rather than restarting the whole chain, and the amount carries its own history — hovering shows what it used to be, who changed it, and when. A resubmission bug that quietly cleared old approvals (and once deleted an approver's comment) was fixed so every resubmission starts a fresh cycle with earlier decisions still visible underneath.

Every screen, explained

A closer look at each part of the app, in the order you'd actually move through it.

New request form — routes itself through department head, Finance, then People Ops.

A request pending its department head — the approval pipeline shown step by step.

Pending Finance — the next stage in the chain, with reviewer and wait time visible.

Changes requested — the approver's note comes back to the submitter with an edit-and-resubmit link.

Decision history — earlier rounds stay visible even after a resubmission.

Fully approved — a payroll-ready award letter PDF generates automatically.

Slack outbox — every notification the app has sent, logged as the audit trail.