How a change becomes real

You’ll need: nothing switched on — this lesson is orientation and applies to every FeePrime business.

When you save something in FeePrime, it does not simply overwrite what was there. Your edit is recorded as a change, and that change is then either approved or left waiting. This one design decision explains the Pending tab, the Audit Trail, and why nothing in FeePrime is ever quietly rewritten.

The two paths

   you edit a record and save
              |
              v
        a CHANGE is recorded
              |
      +-------+-------+
      |               |
  you may         you may not
  approve         approve
      |               |
      v               v
  APPROVED         PENDING
  live now      waits in the
                 Pending tab
                      |
                      v
              a colleague opens it
              and clicks Approve
                   or Reject

Which path your edit takes depends on your permissions. If you are allowed to approve in that module, your save is applied immediately. If you are not, it becomes a pending change and somebody else has to agree with it.

This is often called maker–checker: the person who makes a change is not the person who confirms it.

The Pending tab

Pending shows changes waiting on a decision, with each one displayed as a before-and-after so a reviewer can see exactly what would alter. Opening one gives you Approve and Reject.

Approve applies the change and the record updates. Reject discards it and the record stays as it was. Either way the attempt is permanently recorded, including a rejected one — a rejected change is evidence too.

If you lack the right, FeePrime says so plainly rather than hiding the buttons.

Why this is worth the friction

Two reasons, and the second is the one people underestimate.

The obvious reason is control: a junior clerk can enter a supplier’s bank details, but somebody senior confirms them before money can move against them.

The less obvious reason is that it makes the history real. Because every save is a recorded change rather than an overwrite, FeePrime can answer “who changed this price, when, and from what” for any record you ever touch. That is the subject of the next lesson, and it only works because of what happens here.

What this means for you day to day

If you save something and it does not appear, you have almost certainly created a pending change rather than hit a bug. Look in the Pending tab before reporting anything, and ask whoever approves for your module.

Try it

On staging.feeprime.com, edit a contact and save it. Check whether the change went live or landed in Pending — that single test tells you what your permissions are in that module, which is worth knowing before you need it.