How to require approval before a deal moves stage in HubSpot
By Caner Kaya, Kayabyte
A big deal reaches Contract sent, and nobody in finance or sales management has looked at the terms. Most teams want one simple rule: some deals need a yes from a manager before they move to the next stage. What HubSpot can do here depends a lot on your plan, so this guide goes through it plan by plan, starting with what’s built in.
Pipeline approvals (Sales Hub Enterprise)
HubSpot’s real approval step for deals is part of pipeline rules, and it needs Sales Hub Enterprise: “A Sales Hub Enterprise subscription is required to configure the deal approval process” (HubSpot guide).
- Give each approver the Approve permission under Deals.
- As a Super Admin, click the settings icon, go to Data Management > Objects > Deals, open the Pipelines tab and click the pipeline’s name.
- Open the Pipeline Rules tab, turn on the approval process, and choose the approval stage, optional conditions, the approvers, and whether one or all of them must approve.
How it works:
- You can add up to ten approvers per pipeline. Each pipeline has one approval stage.
- When a deal enters the approval stage, the approvers get a notification in HubSpot and by email, and the deal shows Pending approval. Deals that don’t meet your conditions show Approval not needed and can move on.
- Approvers can approve, reject with a reason, or request changes. A deal can’t move past the stage until it’s approved, and a rejected deal can only go to closed lost.
- Deal approval can’t be bypassed, not even by Super Admins (HubSpot guide).
Things to know: approval won’t start if the deal has no owner or if an approver has been deactivated. Deals that were already in the stage when you turned approvals on don’t need approval. Moving an approved deal back before the approval stage clears its approval.
If you have Sales Hub Enterprise, use this. It’s the cleanest option.
Pipeline rules (Professional and Enterprise)
On any Professional or Enterprise subscription (Sales, Marketing, Service, Data, Content Hub or Smart CRM), the same Pipeline Rules tab has rules that stop many unwanted moves, but there’s no approval step (HubSpot guide):
- Restrict skipping stages: deals have to go through every stage, or the stages you pick.
- Restrict moving records backwards.
- Control object editing access: in the stages you choose, only Super Admins or specific users and teams can edit the deal.
- Limit record creation to specific stages.
A common setup is a “Waiting for approval” stage with skipping restricted and editing in that stage limited to managers. A rep can move the deal into the waiting stage but can’t take it further; a manager does that. Limits worth knowing:
- Super Admins, users with Edit property settings permission, workflows and the API (without a user ID) bypass these rules.
- Skipping is always allowed into Closed won and Closed lost.
- While rules are on, nobody can bulk edit the pipeline or stage of deals in that pipeline.
- There’s no request, decision or record of who approved. The manager simply moves the deal on.
Required properties at a stage (conditional stage properties)
In the pipeline’s settings you can add conditional stage properties: fields that appear when someone moves a deal into a stage. Tick Required, and “users cannot create or update the record until they set a value for it” (HubSpot guide).
This works as a light checkpoint: for example, require Manager approved by or a Discount reason before Contract sent. HubSpot’s article doesn’t tie this to a specific plan. It doesn’t check that the person who filled it in is actually a manager, so it’s a prompt, not a control. Read-only properties (score, calculation) can’t be used.
The workflow and task workaround (Professional and Enterprise)
Without Enterprise, many teams build their own approval with a workflow. Workflows need a Professional or Enterprise subscription (HubSpot guide).
- Create a dropdown deal property, for example Approval status with Requested, Approved and Rejected.
- Add a Waiting for approval stage to the pipeline.
- Build a deal-based workflow that starts when a deal enters that stage (add conditions such as Amount is greater than 50,000).
- Add a Create task action for the manager, and a Send internal email notification or Send in-app notification action (HubSpot guide).
- The manager sets Approval status to Approved and moves the deal on. A second workflow can notify the owner when the status changes.
- Combine it with the pipeline rules above, so reps can’t skip the waiting stage or edit the deal while it waits.
This is honest and free if you already have Professional. Where it stops: anyone with edit access can set Approval status to Approved themselves (unless you limit who can edit the property), Super Admins and workflows can still skip the stage, and the decision history is spread across tasks and property history.
Starter: notifications and tasks, no blocking
Sales Hub and Service Hub Starter have pipeline automations on the board view: when a deal enters a stage, HubSpot can create and assign a task, send an internal email notification or edit a record (HubSpot guide). Go to CRM > Deals, open a board view, hover over the stage and use the Automate menu.
So on Starter you can tell a manager “this deal just reached Contract sent, please check it” and add a required property at that stage. You can’t stop the move, restrict skipping, or lock editing, because pipeline rules need Professional or Enterprise.
Free: a manual process
HubSpot’s free tools come with one deal pipeline and no custom pipelines, pipeline rules or pipeline automations. What’s left is a process agreement: a “Waiting for approval” stage, a required property at that stage, and a saved deal view that managers check. It works when the team sticks to it, but nothing in HubSpot enforces it.
At a glance
| Plan | Notify a manager | Block or undo the move | Approval with a record of the decision |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | Manual | No | No |
| Starter | Task or email at a stage | No | No |
| Professional | Workflows, tasks, notifications | Pipeline rules, with bypasses | Build it with a property and workflows |
| Sales Hub Enterprise | Built in | Yes, can’t be bypassed | Yes, pipeline approvals |
Full disclosure: our app
I make an app for the plans in between, Deal Approvals & Stage Gate. It works on Free, Starter and Professional. You pick the stage that needs sign-off, which deals need it (amount, discount, deal type or any deal property) and who approves. If a deal is moved into that stage without approval, the app moves it back within a couple of seconds and asks the approvers, who approve or reject from a card on the deal. Apps can’t stop a stage change before HubSpot saves it, so the deal is in the stage for a moment before it’s moved back. If you have Sales Hub Enterprise, use HubSpot’s pipeline approvals instead.
Quick answers
Can HubSpot require approval to move a deal stage? Yes, with pipeline approvals on Sales Hub Enterprise. On Professional you can restrict skipping stages and lock editing, and build the approval with workflows.
Can Super Admins skip a deal approval? Not the Enterprise deal approval. They can bypass the other pipeline rules.
Does Sales Hub Starter have deal approvals? No. Starter can create a task or send a notification when a deal enters a stage, but it can’t block the move.
Questions or corrections: support@kayabyte.dev. HubSpot is a registered trademark of HubSpot, Inc. Kayabyte is an independent developer and is not affiliated with HubSpot.