Ever found yourself in a situation where you couldn’t move forward on a project because everybody was just waiting for everybody else’s approval? Bottlenecks like this create unnecessary and costly delays, something you can’t always afford. Well, a few people set out to solve this classic workplace dilemma, and they came up with a decision-making tool called Zapproved.

The great thing about Zapproved is its simplicity. Here’s how it works: on the Zapproved website, create a project proposal by filling out a form like you would a regular email. The “Approvers” text box is for email addresses and the “Proposal Title” is the subject line. Write a brief message explaining what the proposal is all about, and hit Send. That’s it.

The Approvers will each get an email about your proposal, asking them to categorically choose one of the following: approve, deny or comment on it. Since they have to pick one of those 3 options to respond, it becomes clear where each person stands on the proposal and bottlenecks can easily be traced and sorted out. If you’ve ever read a long letter of response that still left you scratching your head (“So, uh, was that a Yes or a No?”), you’ll be happy this tool came along.

Another nice thing about Zapproved is that it’s an open system. Only one person really needs to sign-up on their website (let’s say the project leader) to manage everything, and the rest of the team can just receive notifications via email, wherein they can directly reply to the proposal. All of the conversations can be tracked on the project leader’s Zapproved account. The minimal effort required to set things up is fantastic, and will probably make convincing others to adopt the system an easy task.

Zapproved is on its beta phase so expect a lot of improvements to come in the near future. Among those, I’m hoping, are the ability to edit a proposal (and keep track of the different versions), threaded comments, detailed summary reports, and the option to add approvers after sending the initial message. As it is right now, Zapproved is a useful and simple tool that has the potential to give the collaborative process a shot in the arm. It’s currently being offered as a free service, so if you’ve been experiencing some of the problems I’ve mentioned, go ahead and give it a try.