Guide
This guide is for owners, CFOs and COOs of companies where contracts, invoices and requests live in email, on shared drives and in several versions at once. We show how to build a workflow in Microsoft 365 that covers a document’s whole journey: from creation, through approval, to archiving and deletion. We also explain which process to start with and how not to lose control of it a year later.
A document workflow is the path a document takes from creation to the archive or deletion. Scanning paper to PDF is only the beginning. You can speak of a workflow when the company has decided who works on a document, when and in what order, and the system makes sure that happens.
Take a hypothetical manufacturing company with 150 employees and a contract with a new supplier. Someone in purchasing prepares it using an old template from the shared drive, the lawyer corrects a version sent by email, and the director signs a different one because it arrived earlier. A year later nobody remembers that the contract renewed automatically on worse terms.
The problems are spread across several stages of a document’s life. The list below will help you check which of them apply to your company.
The best first candidate has four features: many documents, repeatable rules, a clear cost of delays and one person who wants it to change. A process that happens once a quarter is rarely worth automating first.
The table below compares typical candidates. Note invoices: since 2026, most invoices from Polish companies arrive through KSeF, Poland’s National e-Invoicing System, as structured data, so the workflow can start automatically once they are downloaded.
| Process | Why it is worth it | What to watch out for |
|---|---|---|
| Purchase invoices | Many documents, clear spending thresholds, KSeF data with no retyping | Needs a link to the accounting system; foreign invoices and receipts still have to be read from scans |
| Supplier and customer contracts | High risk if mistakes are made, notice periods are easy to miss | Fewer documents, but more exceptions and the lawyer’s involvement |
| Purchase orders and requisitions | Spending is controlled before the purchase, not after the invoice | Budgets and thresholds have to be agreed with departments |
| Employee requests | They affect everyone and show results quickly | Personal data and the link to the HR system |
| Quality documentation and procedures | Standard and audit requirements, one current version of each procedure | Strict requirements for approval and change history |
SharePoint is the place for company documents in Microsoft 365, but its strength does not lie in folders. Each document in a library can have descriptive columns, known as metadata: for a contract, these might be the counterparty, type, value, expiry date and status. Workflow rules, views and reports are later built on these columns.
For example, a view called “Contracts expiring within 90 days” is just a filter on the date column. Without columns, the same report means going through hundreds of files. Keep the number of columns small, though – five well-maintained fields are worth more than fifteen that nobody fills in.
SharePoint keeps a version history, so you can see who changed a document and when, and you can go back to an earlier version. Set permissions at the level of the whole library or site, not individual files – otherwise, a year later, nobody will know who can see what.
Another good habit is working with links instead of attachments. When the lawyer and the purchasing team open the same file in SharePoint, the problem of several versions circulating by email disappears.
Power Automate is the Microsoft 365 tool for creating “if something happens, do this” rules. A rule for invoices might read: when an invoice appears in the library, check the amount. Up to PLN 10,000, send it to the department manager; above that, also to the CFO. After approval, change the status and notify accounting.
Approvals can be sequential, parallel or require the consent of just the first person to respond. Requests arrive in Outlook and in the Teams app, including on mobile. A single flow run lasts no more than 30 days, however, so every step should have a deadline, a reminder and a deputy.
Most Microsoft 365 business plans let you build such rules using SharePoint, Outlook and Teams. Connecting to an ERP system, a database or another system often requires a premium connector – a paid connection – and that only works with a paid Power Automate or Power Apps licence.
Power Automate also works well for tasks around approvals. Below are a few examples that deliver quick results in many companies.
A document workflow really begins when the system enforces the rules, rather than employees’ memory and goodwill.
Approval in a workflow is an internal decision: the company agrees to the content of a document or to an expense. For invoices and requests, that is usually enough, provided the history shows who approved the document and when.
A contract is different. If it requires written form, its electronic equivalent is a qualified electronic signature from the people authorised to represent the company. The workflow can prepare the document and pass it on for signature in an external service, but clicking “Approve” does not replace a signature.
In practice, it is worth separating the two steps. First, the manager and the lawyer approve the content in Power Automate; then the management board signs. The workflow saves the signed version in the library and locks it against further editing.
The archive is the most often overlooked part of a workflow. Some documents must be kept for years, while personal data must not be kept longer than necessary. In Microsoft 365, retention periods are set with labels in Microsoft Purview, the tool for protecting and retaining data, and the range of features depends on your licence plan.
The table below shows selected periods required by Polish law. It is a starting point for a conversation with the chief accountant and a lawyer, not a ready-made policy. Industry regulations may require longer retention.
Invoices received through KSeF are also stored in the system itself – according to the Ministry of Finance, for 10 years. That does not, however, release the company from keeping its own archive in order, where it holds the descriptions, decisions and attachments for invoices.
| Document | How long | Legal basis |
|---|---|---|
| Accounting records | At least 5 years from the start of the year following the financial year | Article 74 of the Accounting Act |
| Invoices and records kept for tax purposes | Until the tax liability becomes time-barred – usually 5 years from the end of the year in which the tax payment deadline passed | Articles 70 and 86 of the Tax Ordinance |
| Employee records (people employed since 2019) | 10 years from the end of the year in which employment ended | The Labour Code and the regulation on employee records |
| Commercial contracts | No single period; it is sensible to keep them at least until claims become time-barred – usually 3 years in business-to-business dealings | Article 118 of the Civil Code |
A document workflow works well without AI, and that is where to start. Artificial intelligence adds a layer that understands what a document says, rather than just passing it on. Microsoft Copilot can, for example, summarise a long contract before approval and point out clauses that differ from the template.
Ready-made AI Builder models read data from foreign invoices, receipts and forms. Copilot Studio lets you build an agent that answers questions about documents or prepares a draft decision. Each of these tools means an additional licence cost, so add them only where the workflow without AI has shown where people lose the most time.
The boundary stays the same: AI prepares and suggests, and a person makes the decision. We cover this in more detail in a separate article on AI agents in document workflows.
Power Automate is easy to make available to the whole company, and that is also its risk. A year later, dozens of flows built by different people may be running in the company. Some stop working when their author leaves, and some send data where it should not go.
So before the first workflow goes live, agree on a few simple rules. The list below is enough for a mid-sized company to start with.
A good rollout goes in stages: one process, measurement, corrections, the next process. Before you start, measure the current workflow time on a sample of 30–50 documents – without this, after the rollout you will have only impressions. Then map the current path, remove unnecessary steps, build the workflow in one department and compare the results after a few weeks.
Automation does not always pay off. If the company receives a few dozen invoices a month and two people in the same room approve them, written rules and a shared folder are enough. The same applies when the accounting or ERP system has a good workflow module – it is better to configure it than to build a second one alongside it.
The most common mistake is trying to handle every exception from day one. Such a workflow is fragile and hard to maintain. Handle rare cases manually and automate what happens every week.
Related topics in the knowledge base
FAQ
Questions that come up when a company moves documents out of email and shared drives into a single workflow in Microsoft 365.
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About the author
Kacper Włodarczyk
CEO of ALGORCOMP
Kacper specializes in implementing Microsoft 365 Copilot, Copilot Studio, Power Platform (Power Automate, Power Apps, SharePoint) and AI agents for mid-sized B2B companies in Poland. He leads dozens of projects covering AI strategy, Power Platform governance, document workflow automation and sales processes. In his writing he focuses on the practical side of AI adoption in organizations — from the first proof of concept to company-wide rollout — with particular attention to data security, compliance (GDPR, NIS2, the AI Act) and return on investment.
Meet the teamWe will help you choose the first process, design a SharePoint library and build a Power Automate workflow with clear maintenance rules.
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Author: Kacper Włodarczyk, CEO of ALGORCOMP