Approval Controls

Approval model

SophMate is designed around reviewable action plans. Read-only answers can stay conversational, but changes to products, coupons, customers, published content, theme styling, tools, or settings should become plans that explain risk and affected records. This keeps AI assistance close to WordPress while preserving human review.

Reviewer ownership

Assign reviewers by risk area. Store owners should review coupon and product changes, developers should review custom tools and Theme Assistant CSS, and support leads should review customer-facing reply drafts. The approval feature explains the product surface, while workflow safety docs cover workflow-specific guardrails.

Operating rule

Do not bulk approve mixed-risk plans. Separate commerce, support, visual, and system changes so the reviewer can understand the exact impact before execution.

Quick reference

• Use this page when assigning owners, review paths, privacy decisions, high-risk approvals, client reporting, or incident expectations.
• Do not treat this page as legal, accounting, security, or compliance advice; route sensitive decisions to the qualified owner.
• Key decision: whether high-risk commerce, privacy, visitor-facing, or audit-sensitive work has the right human authority before execution.

Scope limits

• Do not use this page to bypass qualified review for privacy, refunds, checkout, payment, legal, customer, or visitor-facing decisions.
• This page does not replace legal, privacy, accounting, security, or client-contract authority.
• Use it to identify the accountable owner and evidence needed before sensitive work proceeds.

Owner and cadence

• Primary owner: account owner, agency lead, privacy owner, or operations lead depending on risk area.
• Review cadence: monthly, after incidents, after staff changes, and before client or stakeholder reporting.
• Escalate when ownership, approval, privacy, backup, audit, or client-reporting decisions are unclear.

Access and data boundary

• Governance evidence should use least-privilege records, named reviewers, data-minimization notes, privacy decisions, and high-risk commerce approvals.
• Give privacy, approval, backup, offboarding, high-risk commerce, and client-reporting decisions to named owners with authority over those risks.
• Minimize and redact evidence before screenshots, exports, client reports, support bundles, or audit extracts leave the responsible team.

Production checklist

• Separate customer, commerce, content, theme, system, and workflow decisions into reviewable plans.
• Assign reviewers by risk area instead of relying on one generic administrator.
• Assign owners for approval policy, audit review, retention, privacy handling, backup validation, and support escalation.
• Keep governance decisions visible in onboarding notes so agencies, developers, support leads, and store owners do not invent separate rules.

Acceptance checks

• A reviewer can see affected records, risk, proposed change, and execution result before approving more work.
• Bulk approval is not used for mixed-risk plans.
• A reviewer can identify the accountable owner for customer, commerce, theme, privacy, and provider decisions.
• The team has a repeatable monthly review for budgets, audit events, permissions, retention, and unresolved incidents.

Failure modes to test

• Test missing approval authority, incomplete audit chains, privacy deadline misses, erase/export scope confusion, consent failures, and high-risk commerce execution.
• Test missing reviewer authority, incomplete audit records, privacy redaction mistakes, failed backup restore, offboarding gaps, and high-risk WooCommerce changes.
• Confirm governance-sensitive work stops until the accountable owner records the decision and evidence.

Evidence to capture

• Record owner, policy decision, risk level, affected users or workflows, audit trail location, and next review date.
• Capture redaction review for screenshots, diagnostics, support bundles, client reports, and exported artifacts.

Decision record

• Decision field to include: reviewer authority, affected records, privacy impact, customer-facing impact, audit evidence, and rollback or refusal reason.
• Record the governance decision, accountable risk owner, affected users or workflows, policy source, reviewer authority, audit location, and next review date.
• Include privacy, legal, revenue, client-reporting, backup, offboarding, or high-risk WooCommerce implications where they apply.

Stop or rollback path

Stop the affected governance workflow when owner, approval, privacy, backup, access, or high-risk commerce evidence is incomplete. Resume after the accountable owner documents the decision and audit path.

Monitoring window

• Monitor audit records, access changes, privacy requests, approval volume, and client/reporting feedback after each governance change.
• Review unresolved decisions in the next monthly governance cycle or sooner for high-risk workflows.

Expansion criteria

• High-risk governance can expand only after approval authority, privacy impact, audit path, and affected visitor/customer states are verified.
• Expand governance policy only after owners, evidence, audit trail, privacy impact, client communication, and review cadence are clear.
• The policy can be enforced by roles, approvals, documentation, and support routines instead of memory.

Common mistakes

• Treating governance as a one-time setup task instead of a recurring review of roles, budgets, approvals, retention, and audit records.
• Sharing diagnostics, screenshots, or client reports before removing secrets and unrelated private data.

Common questions

What should block high-risk execution?

Block execution when reviewer authority, affected records, privacy impact, rollback evidence, or customer-facing consequences are unclear.

Who should own this decision?

The accountable risk owner should own the decision: privacy, store operations, agency account lead, site owner, or support lead depending on scope.

What should stop the rollout?

Stop when reviewer authority, privacy impact, audit trail, backup, access, or customer-visible risk is unclear.

Related operations

• Pair approvals with Audit Log Review.
• Use Backup and Staging Workflow before high-risk changes.
• Use Regulated Claims and Legal Review before publishing sensitive claims.
• Use Access Offboarding and Seat Review after staff, contractor, or agency changes.
• Use Privacy and Data Retention before sharing support evidence.
• Use Privacy Export and Erase Requests before handling requester data.
• Use WooCommerce High-Risk Actions before store-changing work.
• Use Personalization Privacy Review before visitor targeting launches.