Approval & Review Workflow

When you would rather check each social post before it goes live, theStacc holds every newly generated post for your review instead of publishing it automatically. This page explains exactly what happens to a post while it waits for you, what the Approve, Reject, and Edit actions do, and how the badges on your dashboard tell you what still needs attention.

When approval mode is on#

Approval mode is one of three publishing presets you choose under Social Media > Settings > Auto-Posting. The middle preset is called Draft for Me:

We create each scheduled post and hold it in Review. You approve the ones you want and they publish at their time.

When this preset is on, theStacc still generates every post on your schedule automatically. The difference is the last step: once a post finishes generating, instead of being handed straight to your connected accounts, it is placed in Pending Review and waits for you.

The other two presets behave differently and skip the review step entirely:

• Full autopilot publishes each post automatically at its scheduled time, with no review.
• Manual turns automatic posting off completely. You create and publish posts yourself from the dashboard.

For a full comparison of all three presets and how to switch between them, see Publishing Modes.

Where posts wait: Pending Review#

With Draft for Me on, a freshly generated post lands in the Pending Review state. The post is complete (caption, hashtags, and any images are all done) but it will not publish until you approve it. It simply sits on your schedule, holding its place, until you take action.

You will find your posts waiting for review in two places:

• The Drafts pending review count in the stats bar at the top of the Social Dashboard.
• A Pending Review badge on the post, shown in both the calendar view and the post list view.

Open any post to see its full editor, platform previews, and the Approve and Reject buttons.

The three actions#

When a post is waiting for you, you have three things you can do with it: Approve it, Reject it, or Edit it.

Approve#

Clicking Approve marks the post as Approved and clears it for publishing. From there:

• If the post's scheduled time is still in the future, it stays scheduled and publishes automatically at that date and time using your workspace timezone — you do not have to do anything else.
• If you want it to go out right away, open the post and use Publish Now.

Approving is your sign-off. Nothing publishes from review mode until you have approved it.

Reject#

Clicking Reject marks the post as Rejected. A rejected post is taken out of the publishing flow and will not go live. It is not deleted — it stays on record so you can revisit it, and it can be sent back to be regenerated later if you change your mind.

Rejecting is different from deleting. If you want to remove a post entirely, use the Delete action (the three-dot menu on a post, or the delete option inside the editor) instead. Delete removes the post for good.

Edit#

You can change a post's caption, hashtags, platform-specific text, images, or schedule from the post editor at any time before it publishes. The important thing to know is what editing does to a post you have already looked at:

• Editing a post that is in Pending Review keeps it in review, now flagged as Modified (its state becomes Modified Pending Review). It re-enters review so the change you just made gets a fresh look.
• Editing a post you have already Approved flips it back to Modified (Modified Pending Review). This is on purpose: an approved post is cleared to publish, so any change after approval has to be re-approved before it can go out. This protects you from accidentally shipping an edit nobody reviewed.

Whichever way you got there, a Modified post shows the Approve and Reject buttons again, exactly like a Pending Review post. Approve it again to clear it for publishing.

How a post moves through review#

Here is the full set of moves a post can make while it is in review:

• Pending Review can become Approved, Rejected, or Modified Pending Review.
• Modified Pending Review can become Approved or Rejected.
• Approved flips back to Modified Pending Review the moment you edit it.

In plain terms: a post always has to be in an Approved state to publish, editing always sends it back for another look, and you can reject a post from either review state.

Final and archive states#

Once a post is approved and its time arrives, it leaves review and moves into the publishing flow. You will see these later states on the dashboard:

• Scheduled — approved and handed to the publisher, waiting for its scheduled time.
• Publishing — actively being sent to your connected accounts right now. The post's content is locked while this happens so it cannot change mid-publish.
• Published — live on every targeted platform.
• Partial (Partially Published) — live on some platforms but not all (for example, one account failed). You can retry the platforms that did not go out.
• Failed — publishing did not succeed. A retry is available.
• Cancelled — the post was stopped and will not publish.

Published and cancelled posts are settled and are not changed further. A failed or partially published post can be pushed through again from its editor.

Where review status shows up#

theStacc surfaces a post's state everywhere you look at your content, so you never have to open a post to know whether it needs you:

• Stats bar — the Drafts pending review metric counts everything currently waiting on you.
• Calendar view — each post tile carries a colored status badge (Pending Review and Modified show in amber).
• Post list view — every row shows the same status badge, and you can filter by Upcoming, Published, or Failed.
• Post editor — the post's banner explains its current state, and the Approve / Reject buttons appear whenever a post is in Pending Review or Modified.

For what each later state means and how to recover a post that failed to publish, see Post States & Failures.

Related#

• Publishing Modes — choose between Full autopilot, Draft for Me, and Manual.
• Post States & Failures — every status a post can have and how to fix failures.
• Content & Scheduling — create posts, edit captions and images, and set publishing times.