You send the client a Google Doc. Two days later you have three comments, a suggestion that contradicts one of them, and an email that says “looks good!” Is that an approval? Nobody’s sure. The sender isn’t sure. The client isn’t sure. The doc, which has been edited twice since, definitely isn’t sure.
Google Docs is a great place to write. It’s less obviously a place to get a clear yes from a client. Google does have a built-in Approvals feature, and it helps in some situations. In others, you’ll run into gaps pretty quickly.
This post covers what Google Docs gives you for approvals, where it falls short for agency and client work, and a more structured way to collect sign-off using Gain.
How do approvals work in Google Docs?
There are two layers of review you can use in Google Docs. The first is what everyone already uses: comments and suggesting mode. They’re good for line-by-line edits and bad at answering the one question a client needs to answer, which is “are we done?”
The second is Google’s built-in approvals. According to Google’s Drive Help page, it works like this:
- You lock the file once it’s ready, then request approval from one or more reviewers.
- Reviewers can approve or reject and add an optional note.
- An approval sidebar shows the status. For Docs, Sheets, and Slides, you can review what changed during the approval, and past approvals appear under “View approved versions” in version history.
- If you tick “Require all approvers to review the same content,” any edit resets the approvals.
Google’s announcement of the approvals feature (November 8, 2021) adds that with several reviewers, the document counts as approved once all of them approve, and a single rejection rejects the request for everyone. You can also set a due date, and reviewers get email reminders.
One catch: availability. Google’s current help page says approvals are available only with Enterprise and Google Workspace for Education Plus accounts, and not with personal or standard Workspace accounts. Check your edition before you build a process around it.
Where Google’s approvals fall short for client work
For a team reviewing its own docs, Google’s approvals can be plenty. But agencies and in-house teams working with clients tend to hit these gaps:
Your approval record stays in a silo. Each doc has its own approval history. But a campaign is rarely just a doc. It’s also social posts, PDFs, videos, and web pages, and those approvals happen somewhere else. There’s no single record that answers “what did the client sign off on for this campaign, and when?”
Approval can be undone by anyone with edit access. Locking a file blocks edits, comments, and suggestions, but according to Google, anyone with edit access can unlock it after approval. That’s handy when you need a fix. It’s less handy when you need a clean record of what was approved.
There’s no client workspace. Drive is organized around folders and sharing. It doesn’t give each client or brand a dedicated workspace with its own content calendar and approval queue, so work for ten clients can mean ten folder structures to keep tidy.
Approval and discussion live in different places. Comments stay in the doc, requests come through email, and the “yes” arrives in whichever channel the client prefers. Someone on your team ends up stitching it together by hand.
Approval doesn’t lead anywhere. Once a doc is approved, nothing moves it forward. If it’s a blog post or a social caption, you still copy it into another tool and hope the approved version is the one you copied.
None of this makes Google Docs a bad tool. It’s a writing tool doing a side job as an approval tool, and the side job gets harder the more clients and content types you add.
A more structured way: approve Google Docs in Gain with Embed
Embed lets you paste a public URL into Gain and see it rendered inline, right next to your social posts, files, and other documents. Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides work too, as long as their share settings are public. Here’s the flow:
- Finish the writing in Google Docs. Let your team do the line-by-line edits with comments and suggestions first. Embed is built for one clear decision from the client, not detailed markup.
- Share the doc so Gain can display it. Set the link so it can be viewed publicly. View-only is a good idea, so no one edits the doc mid-review.
- Paste the link into Gain. The doc appears in your client’s workspace, in the same queue as everything else they need to review.
- Choose the approval flow. Route it through whoever needs to sign off, in order. For example: your editor, then the client contact, then their legal team if needed.
- The client approves or requests changes. They open the doc in Gain and make the call. External approvers can sign in with a magic login, so there’s no account to create.
- Gain records the decision. You get a time-stamped record of who approved or asked for changes, and when, in the same place as the rest of the campaign.
A few honest notes. Embed is currently in beta, and some URLs may not render perfectly in every browser or on every device. However, if the doc can’t be public, you can export it as a PDF and upload it to Gain as a file instead. And once a doc is submitted for approval, avoid editing it. If you do need to change it, submit it again so the client approves the latest, final version and not an earlier one.
The bigger win is time saved, for you and for your reviewers. Nobody has to learn a new system for each content type. The blog post, the social captions, the PDF, and the landing page all follow the same process and live in the same place, with one record. That means less time chasing approvals and hunting for the latest version, and more importantly, fewer mistakes. For more on why that matters, see how an effortless approval process improves the client experience.
5 habits that get you a clear yes from clients
Whichever tool you use, these habits make written content easier to approve.
- Ask a specific question. “Thoughts?” invites a debate. “Please approve this by Thursday, or tell us what to change” invites a decision.
- Say what approval covers. Is the client approving the wording, the facts, or the final layout? Spell it out so “approved” can’t be stretched later.
- Name one decision-maker on the client side. Others can comment, but one person gives the yes. It stops conflicting feedback before it starts.
- Keep edits and approval separate. Collect comments first, apply them, then ask for sign-off on the revised version. Mixing the two is how you end up with “looks good, but…”
- Keep a record. Save who approved, when, and which version. If a question comes up in a month, you’ll have the answer. Our guide on managing content edit requests has more on keeping changes under control.
The bottom line
Google Docs is a good place to write and a workable place for a team to review. Getting a clear, recorded yes from a client across every kind of content is a bigger job.
Gain gives that job one home: social posts, files, documents, and web content in the same approval flow, in a workspace for each client, with a record of every decision. Pricing is flat-rate, starting at $99 a month, with unlimited reviewers.
Tired of chasing “looks good” emails? Try Gain free.
