The rolling approval process in Mercury is designed to ensure that plan items requiring modification, which are already in an advanced status (e.g., Booking requested/declined/Booked), are not changed without authorization. It is an internal control element to secure safety-relevant and budget-effective adjustments, by enabling them to be newly approved and only booked afterwards.

The Approval Cycle

Every plan item standardly goes through the following approval statuses:

  • In Planning: The initial status of the plan item.
  • Internally approved: The first internal alignment has taken place.
  • Externally approved: The plan item can now be used for a booking.
  • Booking requested/Booked/declined: Manually set or reached by sending an Insertion Order.

How does the rolling process work?

The process is called "rolling" because a plan item is reset in its status to "In Planning" after a change that fundamentally requires approval, in order to force a renewed approval:

  1. If you change a plan item that has already been Externally approved or booked and the change affects the media performance (e.g., runtime, budget, fees, technical costs), the status of the plan item is reset to In Planning (automated in the future, currently manually possible).
  2. Although the plan item is in the "In Planning" status, it retains a visual indication of the booking status (e.g., Booking requested) through a colored "Bubble" on the outer edge. 
  3. In the Mercury Excel Export, you recognize this state by the status: "In Planning (booked)" as well as in the subsequent status phases: "Internally approved (booked), Externally approved (booked), Booking requested (booked), Booked (booked) and Booking declined (booked)".
Important: The automatic status reset for content changes is not yet functional in Mercury. However, you can manually reset a plan item to the In Planning status today. The automated function is expected to be available by the end of 2025.

Special features regarding Deletion/Cancellation

If a plan item has once reached a status of Booking requested or higher, even if it is reset to In Planning, it can no longer be deleted, but only canceled. This serves as a security measure, as a booking email might theoretically have already been sent to the publisher.

Individual Customization of the Process

For users who do not want to go through the entire approval process every time, Mercury will also offer additional special rights:

  • Users can be equipped to set the status back to Internally approved or Externally approved themselves, even after a change requiring approval, instead of having to go through the complete approval workflow.
If you have any questions about the approval process, please contact your support at any time or speak with a Mercury Super User.