There are three situations when someone should be notified about an order that requires approval:
When an order requiring approval is submitted, the approver is notified.
When an approver approves and places an order, the buyer is notified.
When an approver rejects an order, the buyer is notified.
When an order is submitted that requires approval an Approval Required event is sent and an e-mail is sent to the approver. We first check the locale of the user and then send the appropriate e-mail. When the approver either approves or reject the order an e-mail is sent to the buyer telling him or her what happened to the order.
This is a b2bcommerce scenario that we override in Motorprise in order to add the German language branch.