---
title: "Approve drift"
description: "Confirm that drift was expected, so only the unexpected needs attention."
product: "Guardian"
edition: "Essentials"
type: "workflow"
url: "https://docs.cloudhouse.com/guardian/essentials/detected-drift/approve-drift/"
---
# Approve drift

Approving drift records that a change was expected or authorised. It moves out of the unreconciled count, and the approval goes into the audit trail with who approved it and why.

## Approve one or more changes

1. On **Detected Drift**, open a change and select **Approve**, or select up to 500 changes in the list and approve them together.
2. Choose how to record it:
    - **Approval reason:** pick a reason, such as routine patching. The change is shown as **Standard**.
    - **Change request reference:** enter the change request from ServiceNow or your ticketing system, for example `CHG0012345`. The change is shown as **Reconciled to a change request**.
3. Add a **Justification** if you want to say what the change was for. It's optional, and recorded in the audit trail.
4. Select **Confirm Approval**.

![The Approving this change dialog](https://docs.cloudhouse.com/guardian/essentials/assets/screenshots/approve-dialog.png)

## Manage approval reasons

The reasons offered are your organisation's own. Select **Manage reasons** in the approve dialog to add or edit them.

## Reverse an approval

If something was approved by mistake, open it and select **Unapprove**. Say why the approval is being reversed: the reason is mandatory and recorded in the audit trail. The change goes back to unreconciled.

!!! note "Good to know"
    If you use ServiceNow, you may not need to approve changes by hand. [Change reconciliation](https://docs.cloudhouse.com/guardian/essentials/change-reconciliation/index.md) matches drift to approved change requests automatically. While it's on, you can't select individual changes to approve.