# Deadlines

A deadline puts a clock on a workflow step. When a submission sits on the step past the time you set - or a date on the submission itself comes due - the deadline fires: a chase-up notification, a webhook, or an automatic advance to the next step. Where [reminders](/workflows/reminders) are personal and can be set to repeat, a deadline belongs to the workflow and fires once.

## Adding a Deadline

1. Go to **Admin → Forms** and open the form's flow editor.
2. On the step's {{icon:ellipsis-vertical size-4 inline-block align-text-center}} menu, choose **{{icon:calendar size-4 inline-block align-text-center}} Deadline**.
3. Set when it fires and what it does in the **Deadline Setup** modal, then click **Save**.

A {{icon:calendar size-4 inline-block align-text-center}} badge appears on the step's card so you can see at a glance which steps carry one. Every step type can have deadlines except **Wait for Submissions**, which has its own end condition.

## When It Fires

**Deadline Based On** offers two clocks:

- **Step Arrival** (the default) - fires a number of **Days** after the submission reaches the step and its approvers are assigned. "The purchasing review has been sitting for three days."
- **Date Element** - fires relative to a date field on the form: a number of days **Before the date**, **On the date**, or **After the date**, with an optional **Fire at** time of day. "Three days before the Contract End date." This option appears once the form has a date field. If the chosen field is empty on a submission, that deadline can't be scheduled - and because each rung of a step's deadlines schedules the next, the step's remaining deadlines stop with it (see [Chaining Deadlines](#chaining-deadlines)).

Times are in your account's timezone, and the deadline check runs every 15 minutes - so a deadline fires at the first check on or after its moment, which is also why **Fire at** works in quarter-hour steps. A date that is already in the past when the clock is set fires at the next check rather than being lost.

## What It Does

A lapsed deadline does one of two things:

**Send a notification** - leave **Use existing trigger** off and pick **Who should be notified**. The recipient choices are the same as the [Send Notifications trigger](/submissions/notifications): the submitter, the datasource submitter, all approvers, one step's approvers, a group, whoever it is pending on, or an email address collected on the form. Two switches decide what recipients get: **Send notification to recipients** (on by default) sends the email, and **Share submission with recipients** grants them access - offered for every recipient type except the submitter and Pending, who can already see the submission. Turning the first off while leaving the second on grants access without an email. You can also use a custom email template and [attach the submission as a PDF](/pdf-attachment-notifications).

**Run a trigger you already have** - switch **Use existing trigger** on and pick any of the form's Upon Demand [triggers](/workflows/triggers). This is where deadlines get teeth:

- **Advance Submission** approves the step as a system action and moves the submission along - the "if nobody objects within a week, it proceeds" pattern. This trigger only ever runs from a deadline or a scheduled automation.
- **Post to Webhook** tells an outside system the step went overdue.
- A **Send Notifications** trigger built in the trigger editor can do things the deadline's own wizard cannot, such as texting recipients.

## Chaining Deadlines

A step can carry several deadlines, and together they form an escalation ladder. They fire in order of their offsets, each one exactly once:

1. **3 days after step arrival** - nudge the approvers.
2. **7 days** - notify the approvers' manager.
3. **14 days** - Advance Submission moves it along without them.

Each rung's timing is measured from the original arrival at the step, not from the previous rung firing. The **Current Deadlines** table in the modal lists the ladder in order, with a pencil to edit and a trash icon to remove any rung.

Two subtleties worth knowing when mixing the two clocks on one step. Rung order is decided by the day offsets alone, with before-a-date counting as negative - so a "3 days before Contract End" rung sorts ahead of every step-arrival rung, regardless of when the two actually come due. And the first rung is the one that arms the step's clock, with each rung scheduling the next, so a rung whose date field is empty stops the ladder at that point. Put together: adding a before-a-date deadline to a step that already has step-arrival ones makes the date rung first, and on any submission where that field is blank, none of the step's deadlines fire - including the ones that used to.

## When a Deadline Stops

Deadlines exist to catch submissions that are stuck, so anything that unsticks the step disarms them:

- **The step completes.** Approving or otherwise advancing clears the step's pending deadlines.
- **The submission leaves the flow.** Denial and restarts clear them too.
- **Send Back** re-arms the earlier step's own deadlines - the clock belongs to whichever step the submission is on.
- **Reassign and Transfer restart the ladder.** Both rebuild the step's assignments, which re-arms its deadlines from that moment, back at the first rung.
- On a [collective step](/workflows/collective-steps), the clock runs from enrollment until the person completes the collective's forms; finishing stops it.

## Things to Know

- **Muted steps still fire deadlines.** Muting silences the step's assignment notifications, not its escalations - which is a useful combination: no noise on arrival, a firm nudge when it's overdue.
- **The date can come from anywhere in the submission family.** An element-based deadline reads the field's most recent value, including from a graduated child submission, so a corrected date moves the deadline.
- **Conditional steps route onward immediately**, so a deadline attached to one has nothing to wait on.
- **Anonymous submissions don't arm deadlines** - there is no approver assignment to start the clock from.
- **The only indicators are in the flow editor** - the step-card badge and the Current Deadlines table. Individual submissions don't show a countdown.

## Related

- [Triggers](/workflows/triggers) - the actions a deadline can fire, including Advance Submission
- [Reminders & Automations](/workflows/reminders) - personal and scheduled counterparts to deadlines
- [Notifications](/submissions/notifications) - the recipient options in full
- [Flow Steps](/workflows/flow-steps) - the steps deadlines attach to