How to Use Planable to Run a Month of Client Approvals

The short answer: create one workspace per client on Pro, set its approval workflow to Required with posts locked and auto-scheduled on approval, invite the client with Client membership and Approver rights, make new posts internal by default, release finished posts to the client in one batch, share a view of everything not yet approved, and let an AI assistant read that queue each Monday so your account manager knows whom to chase.

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Approval is where a social calendar loses its week. The posts are ready on Monday, the client answers on Thursday, by email, about an older version. Planable keeps the post, the feedback and the yes in one place, and most of the setup below is about who sees what, and when. For plans and prices, see the Planable glossary entry.

Settle three things before the month starts:

• The plan. Required approval is a Pro feature, $59 per workspace a month on monthly billing (pricing file, checked on 24 October 2026), and client membership is not available on Basic, per the client setup article.
• Page access. You need admin rights on the client's pages. If only the client has them, invite them with a role that can connect pages and let them do it.
• One named approver. A workflow with three possible approvers on the client side is a workflow where each waits for the others.

1. Create the client's workspace and connect its pages

Click Create a workspace in the dashboard, then open Channels, click the plus button, choose a network and click Add pages, as the client setup article shows. The account types matter: LinkedIn connects personal profiles and company pages, Instagram business and creator accounts, Pinterest business accounts only.

2. Make approval required

Hover over the workspace name, click the three dots and open Approval Settings. Choose Required, so that no post can be scheduled or published without at least one approver's green light, then switch on Lock content after approval and Schedule posts automatically on approval, all described in the approvals article. Locking makes the approved version the final one; auto-scheduling means a dated post goes into the queue the moment it is approved, per the auto-schedule article.

3. Invite the client as a client

Click Workspace users at the top right, add the client's name and email, select Approver for permissions and Client for membership, then send the invitation or generate an invite link, following the client approval guide. Membership is the part that protects you: Client members see only external posts and comments, while Team members see internal ones too, per the membership article.

4. Keep drafts internal by default

In Workspace settings, enable Create new posts as internal. New posts then carry a striped bar and stay out of the client's view while your team writes, comments and annotates. Tag a colleague with @ in a comment and use annotations to mark the exact words that need changing.

5. Release the finished batch

Save a view filtered on team-only posts for the coming month and call it Hidden content. The guide recommends List view for this because it allows bulk actions, but List view is an Enterprise feature in the pricing file, so on Pro use the Calendar view the guide offers as the alternative. Select the posts that are ready, open the three-dot menu and click Make visible to clients. They leave the Hidden content view, which is what should happen.

6. Give the client one link

Create a second view filtered on approval status Not approved, for the next 14 days, set it to Workspace access and call it Content to approve. Send the client its URL once and ask them to save it as a favourite. Then ask them to turn on notifications under Profile Settings, so new posts arrive as email or in-app alerts. The guide's own image is inbox zero: as they approve, posts disappear from the view.

7. Let an assistant read the queue on Monday

The chase is the part people skip. Connect Planable to Claude through Settings, Connectors, Add custom connector, with the URL https://mcp.planable.io/mcp, then log in to authorise, per the MCP guide. In a team or organisation account, adding a custom connector takes admin access. Ask: list every post in my workspaces scheduled for the next 14 days that is not approved, with the latest comment on each, and draft one short reminder per client.

The guide itself advises starting with read-only work like this before any write actions, and that is the human check: the assistant reads and drafts, your account manager edits each reminder and sends it, and nobody gives the assistant approval rights. It can only do what the connected user can do, and your plan's post limits apply to it as well.

What Planable's help centre warns about

• Public links cannot approve. A public view lets a client read and comment without an account, but approval needs a login, per the client approval guide.
• The wrong membership exposes your notes. A client invited as Team sees internal posts and comments.
• Locked posts need unlocking. After approval, changing text, media or time means unapproving the post or switching the lock off.
• X during the trial. The free 50 posts cannot publish to X, and Basic publishes one tweet per 24 hours, per the pricing file.
• Assistant access is real access. The MCP guide asks you to treat it like a developer-level API token.

How to know it worked

Take a baseline from last month: for each post, the days between sending it to the client and getting a yes. Measure the same gap in Planable, from Make visible to clients to approved. The trial's 50 posts are there to get your clients' pages connected and their approvers logging in, because that is what makes leaving costly; judge it on whether the gap shrank, not on how full the workspace looks. If posts stall because nobody inside your own team owns the final yes, that is a team problem rather than a tool one, and a one-week review like the Startup Fixer, which I sell, covers it.

FAQ

Can I require approval on Basic?

No. Basic offers None and Optional approval; Required starts on Pro and Multi-level on Enterprise, per the pricing file.

What happens the moment a client approves?

With Schedule posts automatically on approval switched on and a date and time set, the post is scheduled straight away. Without a date, it waits for someone to schedule it.

Does the client need an account?

To approve, yes. Clients sign up from the invitation with Google, Facebook or an email and password, and then log in at app.planable.io, per the client setup article.