The interior design client approval process: deadlines that protect lead times

A lot of late furniture is not late because a supplier let you down. It is late because the client took five weeks to choose between two fabrics, and nobody had told them that week three was the last safe week. The approval process is where lead times are quietly lost, and it is also the part of the project a studio controls most directly.

This guide treats client approvals as a scheduling problem rather than a courtesy. It covers how to set an approval-by date for every selection, where decisions should live, what a client should approve in writing, why the deposit belongs with the approval, and what to send when a decision is running late.

An approval is a date, not a conversation

Every item on your FF&E schedule has a last safe day to order it. Working backwards, that order-by date is the install date, less delivery and inspection time, less the supplier’s lead time. (The full method, with a worked example, is in how to calculate order-by dates for FF&E.)

The approval has to land before that. Between “yes, that one” and an order the supplier will accept, there is usually an invoice to raise, a deposit to clear and a purchase order to send. So the date the client needs to hear is:

Approval-by date = order-by date − time to invoice, collect the deposit and raise the PO

How long that middle step takes depends on your studio. If clients pay deposits within a few days and you raise POs the same week, a week may be enough. If payments go through a client’s finance team or a family office, allow longer. Set your own allowance and use it consistently.

A worked example

Four items for a drawing room with an install date of 2 March, allowing one week for delivery and inspection and one week for deposit and PO. The lead times are illustrative; use the ones your suppliers confirm in writing.

Two things stand out. The sofa needs a decision more than three and a half months before the install, which is earlier than most clients expect. And the curtain approval falls in the first week of January, when many clients (and many workrooms) are still away. Showing a client this table early changes the conversation. They are no longer being chased for a fabric; they are protecting their install date.

Batch decisions by room, sequenced by urgency

Sending selections one at a time produces one email thread per item and a client who feels permanently on call. Sending everything at once produces a client who postpones the lot. Batches work better.

• Group by room. Clients think in rooms, not line items. A drawing room presented as a whole, with the sofa, chairs, curtains and lighting together, is easier to say yes to than four separate requests.
• Order the rooms by the earliest approval-by date inside them. The room holding the long-lead bespoke pieces goes first, even if it is not the room the client is most excited about.
• Split out long-lead items when they would hold a room back. If one piece needs a decision six weeks before everything else in its room, present it on its own, and say why.
• Give each batch a single deadline: the earliest approval-by date in it. One date per batch is easier to remember than one per item.

One place for decisions

Approvals scattered across WhatsApp, email, a site meeting and a comment on a mood board are a common source of “I never agreed to that”. The fix is boring and effective: decisions are recorded in one place only, and the studio moves anything said elsewhere into it.

That place can be a client portal, a shared approvals sheet or a dated PDF the client signs and returns. What matters is that it answers three questions for any item without anyone searching an inbox: what was approved, who approved it, and when.

If a client approves something by text from a showroom, that is fine. Reply to confirm, then record it in the approvals log with the date and the message as the source. It takes thirty seconds and saves arguments later.

What the client should approve in writing

An approval is only useful if it is specific enough to order from. “The green velvet” is not an approval. A good approval record shows exactly what the supplier will be asked to make:

• the product name, supplier and reference, with an image;
• every finish, fabric and colour code, including the fabric for any piping, cushions or contrast details;
• dimensions, and whether they are standard or made to measure;
• quantity;
• the price the client will pay, including VAT where it applies, and any delivery charge;
• the confirmed lead time and the expected delivery window;
• whether the item is bespoke or made to order, and what that means if the client later changes their mind;
• the deposit due and the date the decision is needed by.

Some items need a second approval later. Bespoke upholstery may need a cutting for approval (CFA) from the fabric supplier before it is cut, and joinery or custom furniture often needs shop drawings signed off. Log these as separate approvals with their own dates, because a slow CFA delays the order just as much as a slow first decision.

Keep the version that was approved. If the price or lead time changes after approval, the client approves again. That is all an audit trail is: the dated record of each decision and each change, kept where you can find it.

Take the deposit with the approval

An approval without a deposit is a preference. Until the money is in, you cannot place the order without carrying the risk yourself, and the order-by date keeps moving closer.

The cleanest approach is to make approval and payment one step. When the client approves a batch, the deposit invoice goes out the same day, and the purchase orders go out when it is paid. Your terms of engagement should say this plainly: orders are placed once the selection is approved in writing and the deposit has cleared, and the studio is not responsible for delays caused by late approvals or late payment.

It also helps to say in advance what happens if a client changes their mind after an order is placed. For bespoke and made-to-order pieces, suppliers will often not accept a cancellation once production has started. For consumers, regulation 28(1)(b) of the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013 excludes the supply of goods “made to the consumer’s specifications or are clearly personalised” from the statutory cancellation right on distance and off-premises contracts. How that applies to your own contracts depends on how they are set up, so have your terms checked by a solicitor rather than relying on a general rule.

Change requests after approval

Clients will change their minds. The process should make the consequences visible rather than prevent the change. A simple change request records:

1. what was approved and when;
2. what the client now wants;
3. the cost of the change, including any cancellation or restocking charge from the supplier;
4. the effect on the order-by date and the install date;
5. the client’s approval of the change, dated.

Agree in your terms whether change requests carry a design fee, and keep them in the same approvals log as everything else.

When a decision is late

A useful way to track approvals is the same triage scale you use for procurement. An item is OK while there is comfortable time before its approval-by date, watching as that date approaches, at risk once it is close or has passed but the install can still be met, and blocked once the install date can no longer be met as planned. Agree your own thresholds and apply them to every line, not just the ones you remember.

When an item moves to at risk, send a short, factual message that names the item, the date, the consequence and the options. Here is a template you can adapt:

Subject: Drawing room sofa: decision needed by 10 November

Hi Anna,

A quick note on the drawing room sofa. To have it made, delivered and checked in time for the install on 2 March, we need your approval and the deposit by 10 November. The workshop’s lead time is 14 weeks, so this is the last date that keeps the install on track.

If that is too soon, there are two options. We can install the rest of the room on 2 March and fit the sofa when it arrives, or I can send you two in-stock alternatives that would arrive in time.

The selection, fabric codes and price are on the approvals page. A reply here or an approval there is all I need.

Thanks,
Stacey

Keep the tone neutral. The aim is to make the trade-off clear, not to make the client feel chased. If the date passes, follow up with the options laid out again, and record what the client chose. (For what to do when it is the supplier, not the client, who moves the date, see managing supplier delays.)

A weekly approvals routine

None of this is elaborate, but it needs to happen every week:

1. Sort the schedule by approval-by date and look at everything due in the next three weeks.
2. Check that anything approved since last week has a deposit invoice out and a PO raised or ready.
3. Move any item past its approval-by date to at risk and send the escalation message.
4. Recalculate dates for any item whose lead time or install date has changed.
5. Copy any decisions made by phone, text or on site into the approvals log.

If you run your schedule in a spreadsheet, add an approval-by column and an approval status column next to the order-by date. The free FF&E schedule template is a good place to start.

Where software helps

The difficulty is not the arithmetic. It is keeping a few hundred dates current while lead times and install dates move. In Techstyles, every FF&E line is scored against its install date, with an order-by date counted back from the supplier’s lead time, and marked blocked, at risk, watching or OK using thresholds your studio sets (more on procurement). Clients approve selections in the client portal, so the decision sits next to the item rather than in an inbox.

The client will still take time to choose. The point is that they, and you, know exactly how much time there is.