Approval debt is the time a post spends waiting on a person instead of moving. You can measure it in one afternoon with five questions and a list of last month's posts.
TLDR: Pull last month's posts and note, for each one, who held it, how many rounds it took and how long it waited. Score yourself on five questions. Fix the single biggest source first: usually unclear ownership or feedback scattered across channels.
Mydrop data, September 2026: on posts that went through a client approval on Mydrop, the median time from submission to approval was 6 hours, and 66% were approved within 24 hours. Method in the Mydrop social media benchmarks.
Five questions to score your approval flow
For each question, give yourself 0 (no problem), 1 (sometimes) or 2 (often). A total of 6 or more means debt is slowing your launches.
| Question | 0 points | 2 points |
|---|---|---|
| Does every post have one named approver? | Always | "Whoever sees it first" |
| Is feedback in one place? | In the tool | Email, chat, calls and comments |
| How many revision rounds on a typical post? | One | Three or more |
| Do approvers know when a post is waiting? | They are told | They find out by being chased |
| Can you see where any post is right now? | At a glance | You have to ask around |
Be honest on the third one. Three rounds on a caption is rarely about the caption. It usually means the brief was unclear at the start.
Turn the score into days lost
Take last month's posts and mark each one that waited more than 24 hours at any step. Multiply the count by the average wait in days, then add the hours you spent chasing. This is your approval debt for the month.
For a sense of what normal looks like: on posts that went through a client approval on Mydrop, the median time from submission to approval was 6 hours, and 66% were approved within 24 hours. A flow that regularly takes days is losing time somewhere other than the decision itself.
The three patterns behind most debt
Most slow flows come from the same three causes. Match your worst score to its fix.
- No single owner. Two people each assume the other will approve. Fix: one named approver per post, with a backup for holidays.
- Feedback in five places. The designer sees chat, the writer sees email, nobody sees the call. Fix: all comments live on the post itself.
- Open-ended rounds. Feedback keeps coming because nothing says it must stop. Fix: two rounds, then the approver decides.
Put the decision inside the post
Decisions must live inside the artifact. If the approval is not attached to the post, it does not exist.
In Mydrop, you can assign an approver per post, collect comments on the draft, and send external clients a no-login link through the client portal. Reviewers get the post and the question in one place, and you can see every post's status in the calendar. To cut chasing, the approval reminder schedule shows when to nudge.
Run the audit before Friday
Open last month's calendar, list the 10 posts that went slowest, and answer the five questions for each. Write the biggest cause on a sticky note and fix only that one this month. Next month, run the audit again and compare the score.
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