Architect Drawing Approval Management System Web App

Ask any document controller what actually goes wrong on a drawing package and you will not hear about software. You will hear that a contractor built from revision B while revision C was sitting in someone’s inbox, that a client’s Critical comment was quietly marked resolved by nobody in particular, and that the overdue list on the spreadsheet disagreed with the overdue list in the meeting. The Architect Drawing Approval Management System Web App exists to make those three things structurally impossible rather than merely discouraged.

It is a Google Apps Script application – one script file and one HTML file – that you deploy into your own Google account in about fifteen minutes. The demo database seeds 11,504 rows across 20 sheets, so nothing is empty on first sign-in: 632 drawings carrying 1,627 revisions across 24 projects, 284 transmittals covering 1,137 issued sheets, 2,178 reviews, 1,561 reviewer comments and 240 RFIs. That is demo data for evaluation only, clearable in one menu click. The sample practice is running at a 10.6-day average approval turnaround against a 14-day review period, with a 42.3% first-time approval rate and 18 sheets past their response date – a chase list, not a wall of red.

The sign-in screen

Access is by username and password against six seeded roles, with passwords stored only as salted SHA-256 digests – the plain text is never written to the spreadsheet and never returned to the browser. The sign-in card deliberately does not display the credentials, and an account locks after a configurable number of failed attempts.

Key Features of the Architect Drawing Approval Management System Web App

Four rules are enforced on the server, not in the browser, and turning off JavaScript will not get round any of them:

1. One current revision per sheet. Raising revision C supersedes revision B in the same operation. Nothing is deleted – superseded revisions move into the sheet history.
2. No double issue, no orphan decision. A revision already out for approval cannot have a new revision raised over the top of it, and a decision can only be recorded against a revision that was actually issued.
3. Comments close only with a resolution. A comment needs an explicit resolver, a date and a note. A revision cannot be recorded as plain Approved while a Critical or Major comment against it is still open.
4. Overdue is computed, never typed. It comes from the response date plus the grace period, so the dashboard, the review queue and the report always show the same figure.

Around those rules sit six roles with real separation of duties, a permission matrix of five action rights (Create, Edit, Delete, Export, Approve) that guards the server endpoints rather than just hiding menu items, twelve exportable reports, Excel and CSV export on every table, a complete audit log, an optional daily digest email, and three print sizes – A4, 4 inch and 3 inch – so a thermal printer at the plot station still produces something readable.

Every Page in the System, Explained

Practice Dashboard

Twelve KPI cards across the register, the workflow, comments and RFIs, with a six-month trend of revisions raised against decisions recorded and transmittals issued, plus the approval outcome mix. In the sample practice that mix is 793 Approved, 469 Approved with Comments, 142 Rejected and 223 still in the workflow.

Projects and Clients

Every commission with its drawing count, approval percentage, what is out with a reviewer and what has slipped, alongside a Clients tab that acts as the organisation directory. Each project carries its own review period in days, and that is what every response date is calculated from.

Drawing Register

One row per sheet showing the revision that is current right now and exactly where it has got to, with breakdowns by discipline, workflow status and sheet size. Open any row for the full revision rail, the comment log, the transmittal history and the issue trail.

Submittals and Transmittals

Every package that has left the office, with an acknowledgement rate of 90.8% across 284 transmittals in the sample data. Issuing is a single action that stamps each sheet as Issued for Approval, starts the review clock, opens a review per sheet, writes the issue history for every recipient and emails the covering note.

Review and Approval

The live queue of everything with a reviewer, sorted by how late it is, with a comment log tab beside it. Record a decision, attach the comments that came back, extend a response date with a reason, or reassign the reviewer. Average time out is 7.2 days and average resolution time 7.8 days across 1,491 resolved comments.

Requests for Information

Questions from site and from the design team, each with a response window running against it, split by status, priority and discipline. An answer can carry a cost impact and a programme impact in days, which the RFI report then totals – the sample data records 512k of cost impact and 105 days of programme impact across 240 RFIs.

Distribution

The consultants and contractors you issue to, the named people on each distribution list, and the complete trail of which sheet reached whom – 1,908 issue records and 2,116 copies issued in the sample. Each organisation carries a turnaround average and a rating, so it is obvious who comes back on time and who does not.

Reports

Twelve exportable views over the same data, grouped by register, approval, issue, comments, queries and people: Drawing Register, Revision History, Discipline Summary, Approval Turnaround, Overdue Approvals, Project Progress, Submittal Log, Distribution Report, Comment Log, Comment Resolution, RFI Register and a workload view. Every one prints at your chosen size.

Settings

Eleven tabs: Practice, Numbering, Workflow, Finance, Print, Email, Theme, Security, Archive, Database Archive and Maintenance. This is where the practice profile printed on your transmittals lives, where you switch the open-comment approval block on or off, and where the session timeout and lockout thresholds are set.

Practice Roster, User Management, List Management, Audit Log and Help

Five more pages ship with the system and are not pictured above. Practice Roster shows who is in the studio, what they own on the register and what they have cleared in the last ninety days, by team and by job role. User Management holds the six accounts and the role permission matrix. List Management is where every dropdown lives – 194 seeded values across lists such as Comment Category, Comment Severity and Decision – and removing a value never rewrites records that already use it. Audit Log is the filterable history of who did what and when, seeded with 300 entries. Help explains the workflow, each module and each role in plain words, inside the app.

Architect Drawing Approval System vs. a Shared Spreadsheet vs. Paid Document-Control SaaS – Feature Comparison

Who Should Use This Template

It suits small and mid-sized architectural practices, design studios and document controllers who are running the drawing register in a shared spreadsheet and losing track of which revision is live. Interior, landscape and MEP consultancies have the same problem and the same shape of solution. It also suits any practice that wants the issue-and-approval history in one auditable place without paying per seat every month.

It is not the right tool for several things, and it is worth being blunt about each of them. It performs no building-code, permit or planning compliance checking, and nothing recorded in it should be taken as satisfying a regulator. It performs no structural or engineering review – nothing here calculates or validates a design. It applies no professional architectural or engineering certification or stamp. Its decisions are audited database records, not legally binding electronic signatures, and no claim is made about their standing in any jurisdiction. And it has no CAD or BIM integration: there is no link to Revit, AutoCAD, ArchiCAD or IFC, because it manages drawing records – numbers, revisions, statuses, comments, RFIs and files you upload yourself – not model geometry. Large contractors already tied into a client-mandated common data environment should stay there.

Real-World Use Cases

Marcus, document controller at a 26-person practice. He was maintaining the register in a spreadsheet and the transmittals in a folder, and twice in one year a contractor built from a superseded sheet. Here, issuing a transmittal is one action: the sheets stamp themselves, the clock starts, and nobody can raise a revision over one that is still out. He cannot record decisions himself, which is exactly what his principal wanted.

Priya, design team lead running three schemes. She works the approval queue sorted by lateness rather than re-reading a spreadsheet. When a client returns a drawing carrying a Critical comment, the system refuses to let it be signed off as plain Approved until somebody records how that comment was resolved and who resolved it.

Helena, practice principal. She opens the dashboard weekly for the six-month trend and the first-time approval rate, then the Distribution page to see which consultants average ten days and which drag. After a dispute, the audit log answers the only question that matters: who decided what, and when.

Advantages of the Architect Drawing Approval Management System Web App

• The rules are structural. Most drawing trackers are a layout convention that a tired person can break at 6pm. These four are server-side and cannot be bypassed from the browser.
• Separation of duties actually separates. The Document Controller issues but cannot approve; the Consultant Reviewer sees no client or commercial data at all.
• One figure for overdue. Because it is computed rather than typed, the dashboard, the queue and the report never disagree in a meeting.
• It is yours. The database is a Google Sheet in your own Drive, the source is plain commented JavaScript, and there is no external service in the loop and no per-seat fee.
• Populated on day one. A seeded database of 11,504 rows means you can evaluate every report before entering a single record of your own.

Opportunities for Improvement

Being fair about the limits: this is Apps Script, so it inherits Google’s execution quotas, and a very large practice pushing tens of thousands of revisions through it will feel that before a dedicated SaaS platform would. There is no native mobile app – the interface is responsive in a browser, which is a different thing. File attachments live in Drive folders rather than in a versioned document vault, and there is no automatic OCR, thumbnail or drawing preview. The daily digest email is opt-in and requires you to add the time-driven trigger yourself. And, as above, there is no CAD or BIM link of any kind, which for some practices will be the deciding factor. Every screen in the shipped build rendered cleanly during review, with no visual defects to report.

Best Practices

• Change every default password before you enter real data, and delete the seeded accounts you will not use. The published credentials are for the public demo only.
• Set each project’s review period first. Every response date and every overdue figure is derived from it, so getting it right up front saves re-explaining the numbers later.
• Leave the open-comment approval block switched on. It is the setting that stops a Critical comment being lost, and switching it off gives back the exact problem you bought this to solve.
• Clear the demo data with Drawings > Reseed Workflow Data before go-live; it rebuilds the register and workflow while keeping your settings, lists, roles, users and contacts.
• Publish a new version after every code change. Apps Script serves only the version you published – see Google’s official web apps documentation for how deployments and versions work.
• Take a backup copy before big imports using the Create Backup Copy menu item.

Explore Relevant Templates

If you run projects as well as drawings, look at the Home Renovation Project Management Web App and the App Development Project Management System Web App. For the commercial side of a practice there is the Consulting Project and Billing Management System Web App and the Accounting Firm Client Management System Web App. Other systems built the same way include the Hospital Management System Web App, the Airport Transfer Management System Web App and the Adventure Sports Booking Management System Web App.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I try it before buying?

Yes. The live demo is linked near the top of this article, with all six role logins listed. It is a shared public instance seeded with demo data that resets periodically, so treat it as a showroom rather than a workspace – but every page, report and permission rule behaves exactly as your own deployment will.

Does this make my drawings code-compliant, or count as a permit or engineering approval?

No. It records the approvals your own team, clients and consultants give. It performs no building-code check, no permit or planning review and no structural or engineering verification, and it applies no professional stamp or certification. Approved here means a named person recorded a decision on a date.

Are the recorded decisions legally binding electronic signatures?

No. They are audited database records with a user, a timestamp and an audit trail. No claim is made about their legal validity as signatures anywhere. If you need qualified e-signatures, run a dedicated e-signature service alongside this system.

Does it integrate with Revit, AutoCAD or a BIM model?

No, there is no CAD or BIM integration of any kind. It manages drawing records and the files you upload yourself; it does not read, write or interpret model geometry.

Where is my data stored?

In a Google Sheet in your own Google Drive, created the first time you run setup. Nothing is sent to us and no external service is involved. Uploaded files go into a folder tree in the same Drive account.

Can I change the roles and permissions?

Yes. User Management > Role permissions is a matrix of modules against Create, Edit, Delete, Export and Approve, and the same map guards the server endpoints – so it is a real permission change, not a hidden menu item.

Is the sample data included, and can I clear it?

It is included so nothing looks empty on day one, and Drawings > Reseed Workflow Data clears the workflow and rebuilds the register while keeping settings, lists, roles, users, staff, clients, consultants, contacts and projects.

About the Author

Built by PK – Microsoft Certified Professional with 15+ years of Excel, Google Sheets, and Power BI experience. Founder of NextGenTemplates, reaching 300K+ subscribers across YouTube channels. Every template is hand-built and tested before release.

Conclusion

Drawing approval goes wrong in predictable ways, and the fix is not more discipline – it is a system that will not let the mistake be made. One current revision per sheet, a clock that starts when the package leaves, a comment that cannot close without somebody’s name against the resolution, and an overdue figure that is calculated rather than remembered. That is what this system is, and at fifteen minutes of setup in your own Google account it is a much smaller commitment than the per-seat platforms that enforce the same rules.

Before you decide anything, open the live demo and sign in as doccontrol, then as admin. Five minutes there will tell you more than this whole article. If it fits how your practice works, you can get the Architect Drawing Approval Management System Web App here.

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