Concord contract stuck 'in review' - the approval chain never advanced

TL;DR

A Concord contract stuck 'in review' means the approval chain is waiting on a step that cannot advance: an approver who never got the notification, a step assigned to a deactivated user, or a misconfigured chain with no valid next approver. Open the contract's approval timeline, identify the current pending step and its owner, and either nudge or reassign it. Approval chains do not time out or self-heal - a stuck step waits forever until a human moves it.

The query

Concord contract stuck 'in review'  -  the approval chain never advanced

Use this when

• A Concord contract sits in 'in review' far longer than the approval SLA
• The approval chain shows a pending step with no activity
• An approver left the company or changed roles mid-review

Not for

• Contracts stuck in draft before review ever started - those never entered the chain
• E-signature ceremony stalls after approval completed - a different stage with different tooling
• Bulk approval failures across many contracts - check for a platform incident first

Steps

1. Open the approval timeline and find the current step

On the contract, open the approval or workflow view. It shows each step, its status, and its owner. The stuck contract has exactly one step in pending with everything after it waiting - that step is the whole bug. Expected output: the pending step is named, with its assigned approver and how long it has been waiting.

2. Check whether the owner can actually act

Verify the assigned approver is an active user with access to the contract. Deactivated accounts, role changes, and lost SSO access all leave a step assigned to someone who can never approve it. Also confirm they received the notification - check spam, delegation rules, and notification settings. Expected output: either the approver confirms they saw it (then it is a prioritization problem) or you find they cannot act.

3. Reassign or delegate the step

Use the reassignment action on the pending step to move it to an active approver, or have the original approver delegate if they still have access. Prefer reassigning over skipping: the audit trail should show who actually approved. Expected output: the step shows the new owner and the notification goes out immediately.

4. Fix the chain template if the configuration is wrong

If the pending step has no valid owner by design - an empty role, a deleted team, a circular delegation - the template itself is broken and every future contract will stick at the same place. Fix the approval template, then reassign the stuck contract's step. Expected output: new contracts flow past the fixed step; the stuck one is reassigned manually.

5. Add a stalled-review alert

Approval chains have no built-in escalation timer in most setups. Add a report or automation that flags contracts in review longer than your SLA so the next stuck step pages someone instead of aging silently. Expected output: the next stall triggers an alert within the SLA window instead of being discovered by accident.

Tool compatibility

Concord contract management, approval workflow features. The timeline and reassignment actions are in the web app; the pattern applies to any staged approval chain.

Variant phrasings

• Concord contract stuck in review approval chain never advanced
• Concord approval workflow stalled pending approver
• Concord contract in review no one approving how to reassign
• Concord approval step assigned to deactivated user

Why it happens

Approval chains are state machines advanced only by human action: each step waits for its owner, and there is no timeout transition. That is intentional - auto-advancing an approval would defeat its purpose - but it means any step whose owner cannot act (deactivation, missed notification, misconfiguration) parks the contract permanently. The system is waiting correctly; the configuration or the roster is wrong.

Edge cases / pitfalls

• Reassigning does not notify the original approver by default in some setups - tell them directly to avoid double approvals.
• Contracts with parallel approval branches can look stuck when one branch lags; check all branches before reassigning.
• An approver who rejects sends the contract backward, not forward - confirm the step is pending, not rejected.
• Template fixes do not retroactively repair in-flight contracts; each stuck one needs its step reassigned.

Provenance

Resolved from the public thread: https://vectle.com/posts/pst2l6UAywG8LZRs4jEe3OHA