Submit a business case for approval

Submitting sends the business case to the sponsor for the commit decision. This guide covers moving a case from Draft to Submitted, and what the sponsor does next.

Before you start

You need edit rights to submit.
Submission is one of the two deliberate hard gates in Tollgate (the other is lessons at a Not-realised verdict).
Everything else is a soft signal, not a block.

Before you can submit, the case needs a Decision authority (sponsor) named and the four Adoption & Change inputs set. The four inputs are who has to change behaviour, the adoption KPI (key performance indicator), the adoption owner, and the change saturation level.

Complete the Adoption & Change quartet

Open Business Case and go to the Adoption & change section.
Complete each of the four fields.

The submit-readiness counter shows how many of the five required inputs (sponsor + four Adoption inputs) are complete. A Next cue points at the next missing one.

Submit

With all five required inputs complete, choose Submit for approval.
Confirm at the prompt. Submission locks the case while the sponsor decides, so the confirmation states that consequence.
The case flips to Submitted, and a Sponsor Decision Pending card appears at the top of Investment Health.

Hand it over

Unless you are the sponsor deciding your own case, submitting opens a Submitted — now with {sponsor} dialog. This is the moment the work leaves you, and Tollgate makes it explicit because nothing else will: the app notifies nobody.

Two controls:

Copy email — a prefilled message naming the investment, the ask, and a link to the review.
Copy review link — just the deep link, for Slack, Teams, or a message in your own words.

Neither control sends anything. Paste the email into your mail client and send it yourself. Done closes the dialog.

Where the sponsor holds a non-Jira seat, the dialog says so plainly. They cannot open Tollgate, so the email is the only way the request reaches them.

Where the submission then sits

A Jira-seated sponsor finds it in Awaiting your decision on the Portfolio, and decides in Tollgate.
A non-Jira sponsor cannot see Tollgate. The submission appears in your own Out for decision lane instead.

The submission ages visibly, so the chase stays yours.

The named sponsor reviews the case and takes one of three actions:

Approve — with optional rationale. The case becomes Approved, and you can lock baselines in Initiation.
Return — with structured notes for the PM to address. See Return, reopen, or amend.
Archive — explored, not pursued, with the reason recorded.

A sponsor who cannot open Tollgate replies to you instead. You then enter their answer through the record dialog and attach their reply as the evidence of record. While the case is out, the primary action on Investment Health becomes Record the sponsor’s decision. See Record a decision.