Pending Approval — Rewards System

What Enters the Approval Queue

Action	Approval Required?	Who Can Approve?
Point award ≤ 500 pts	No — immediate	N/A
Point award 501 – 10,000 pts	Yes	Any admin other than the submitter
Tier promotion (any tier)	Yes	Any admin other than the submitter
Badge grant (any badge)	No — immediate	N/A
Point deduction ≤ 500 pts	No — immediate	N/A
Point deduction > 500 pts	Yes	Any admin other than the submitter

Pending Approval Queue

All admin accounts can access the pending approval queue at Rewards Management → Pending Approvals. The queue shows all outstanding requests across all reward types requiring second-admin confirmation.

Queue Contents

Each item in the queue shows: submitting admin, publisher, award type, amount, reason note, and submission timestamp. Items are sorted by submission time (oldest first).

No Self-Approval

The admin who submitted the award cannot approve their own submission. Their name appears as "Submitted by" and the approve/reject buttons are disabled for them. Any other admin can approve.

Expiry

Pending items expire after 30 days without approval. Expired items are moved to the audit log as "Expired — Not Approved" and the award is not credited. The submitting admin is notified of the expiry.

Urgency Flag

The submitting admin can flag an item as urgent when submitting. Urgent items appear highlighted in the queue and trigger a notification to all admin accounts that a pending item requires attention.

Approving or Rejecting

Open Pending Approvals — Review the queue. Click any item to open its detail view, which shows the full award details and the submitting admin's reason note.

Evaluate the request — The detail view also shows the publisher's current stats (tier, lifetime points, weighted score) for context. Read the reason note carefully.

Approve or Reject — Click "Approve" to credit the award immediately. Click "Reject" to cancel the award — a rejection reason is required (minimum 20 characters).

Results — Approval: award is credited; publisher is notified; audit log updated. Rejection: award is discarded; submitting admin is notified with the rejection reason; audit log updated.

Publisher is not notified during the pending period

Publishers are only notified when the award is actually credited (i.e., after approval). A publisher is not informed that a large award is "pending approval" — they simply receive the normal award notification if and when the approval goes through. If the award is rejected, the publisher is never notified.

Pending Approval for Tier Promotions

Tier promotions follow the same queue workflow, but with one additional consideration: the approval detail view shows the publisher's complete tier history, including any previous manual tier promotions, to give the approving admin full context. A publisher who has already received multiple manual tier promotions may warrant additional scrutiny before another is approved.

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