🔐 To Manage the Chain of Approval, you'll need Circus Admins access to reach the production settings. Learn more about Managing Permissions. This feature is only accessible to 🖥️ Desktop Users.
Overview
In production offices, the “chain of approval” is the hierarchy that signs off on Start Packs, Timesheets, Invoices, and everything in between. Each submission moves through the right people—approvers, counter-signers, and anyone responsible for accuracy, compliance, or audit-ready documentation.
In Circus, every product has its own dedicated approval flow. That means people only review what’s actually relevant to their role. A studio exec might sit in the Start Pack chain to sign off on kits or allowances, but they’ll never touch the Timesheet approvals. It keeps the process clean, lean, and in the hands of the right decision-makers.
Each chain of approval can be customized with as much complexity as the production needs:
Multiple Chains - Create separate chains for different departments. For example, you might build a chain where only studio executives approve onboarded workers in Accounting, while department heads can handle their own team’s submissions.
Approver Groups - Approvers can be grouped into “Approver Groups,” letting multiple people share a single approval step. If two payroll accountants are in the same group, either one can approve—keeping the process moving even when someone’s swamped.
Assigned Responsibilities - You can specify exactly which documents or conditions an approver group is responsible for. For example, a group might be required to review Start Packs where a worker flags a conflict of interest, has an above-scale union rate, or requests a kit/allowance. This ensures sensitive or non-standard items always land with the right people.
Accessing Approvals
To create or update a chain of approval, open the production from your main dashboard. On the production dashboard, use the left-side navigation and click the Production Settings icon. From there, select any product and adjust its chain of approval as needed.
Managing Approval Chains
Chain 1 is your default approval flow, meaning all submissions follow it unless you create additional chains. You can set up to five chains total, allowing you to route approvals to specific departments or handle specialized workflows separately.
Adding a Chain
To add a new chain of approval, click Add Chain, then choose which departments should be filtered into that chain.
Removing a Chain
Since Chain 1 is the default approval flow, it can’t be removed. Additional chains, however, can be deleted at any time by clicking the Delete icon at the bottom of the chain.
Managing Approvers
You can keep things simple with a single approver group and one person signing off on everything. Or you can build a more structured flow with multiple approver groups, each with several people and their own specific responsibilities.
Adding Approver Groups
Each approver can be added to an 'Approver Group', which can include multiple people. This way, the whole group acts as a single step in the approval process.
Before adding anyone to the chain of approval, each person must have already been invited to the production, either with or without a Start Pack. When an approver is added to any Approver Group, they are automatically granted access.
Adding Approvers
To add one or more approvers to an Approver Group, click the main input field and search for anyone already invited to the production by name, email, or role, then click the Add button. Repeat the process to include as many people as needed in that group.
🔒 Automatic Access – Anyone added to an approver group automatically gets the access they need to view and approve the relevant submissions as soon as the page is saved. If you remove someone from a group, or the group itself, their access to that specific approval chain is revoked—though any other permissions they previously had will stay in place.
Assigning Responsibilities
Responsibilities can be assigned to either an Approver or an Approver Group. This is useful when certain scenarios require an extra set of eyes. For example, you may want a Studio Executive to countersign a Start Pack if a worker discloses a conflict of interest — like their mother being the director of the project.
Below are the available responsibilities:
Primary co-signer - Acts as the primary signer on all documents, especially those with a single production-representative signature line (e.g., union deal memos). When this is enabled for an Approver Step, no other responsibilities can be applied. This person also countersigns all Conflict of Interest Questionnaires, regardless of whether a conflict is indicated.
Approve Everything - Reviews and approves every document within the Start Pack, no exceptions, without requiring a signature.
Approve Above-Scale - Reviews Start Packs where above-scale union rates have been flagged.
Approve Kits & Allowances - Reviews Start Packs that include kits, allowances, or similar deal points.
Approve Conflicts - Required to review Start Packs where the worker has answered “Yes” to any conflict in Circus' custom-built Conflict of Interest Questionnaire.
If any responsibility above is triggered, you can also specify what the approver needs to countersign. The options are:
Countersign Topsheet – Only the first page of the Start Pack, where all deal points are summarized.
Countersign All Documents – Every document in the Start Pack that includes space for multiple signatures.
Countersign Conflicts – Only the Conflict of Interest Questionnaire, when the worker has answered “Yes” to any conflict.
Directors Guild of Canada - For Canadian productions, Circus will automatically notify any authorized and invited producer with Managers access to sign DGC deal memos. Therefore, producers are not required to added to the chain of approval. In British Columbia, Production Managers are eligible to sign these forms. See below for more details.
Re-Ordering Approver Groups
To reorder an Approver Group, click and drag the handle icon to move it up or down within the chain.
Deleting Approver Groups
To remove an entire Approver Group, click the delete icon next to the search field.
To remove an approver from a group—or swap them out—click the delete icon next to their name. Then follow the same steps as before to add a new approver.
Approval Notifications
When it’s your turn to review, you’ll receive an email notification for each submission. If you’re already logged in, just click the tasks icon in the bottom-left corner to see everything that needs your approval.
Resetting Approvals
If the Chain of Approval is modified after submissions are already in progress, you may occasionally see an item stuck in “Pending Review” with no assigned approver — essentially, it’s stuck in limbo.
To fix this, click the three-dot menu next to the submission and choose “Reset Approvals.” This sends the item back to the first step in the updated Chain of Approval, ensuring it moves through the full approval flow as intended.
Directors Guild of Canada
The following roles are authorized to sign Directors Guild of Canada Forms.
DGC Alberta | Post Producer |
DGC British Columbia | Whoever is assigned as the primary co-signer will countersign DGC forms, so for DGC BC you need to add this person to the chain of approval and make them the primary co-signer. |
DGC Manitoba | Post Producer |
DGC Maritimes | Post Producer |
DGC Newfoundland and Labrador | Post Producer |
DGC Ontario | EVP Post Production |
DGC Quebec | EVP Post Production |
DGC Saskatchewan | Post Producer |
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