An approver may push back a claimed request to a previous workflow stage to question the purpose, accuracy, or incompleteness of the request. During the push back, the approver selects the stage to which the request will be assigned and is required to provide a comment to identify the reason for pushing back the request. After the request is assigned to the previous stage, assigned users may claim the request to modify it and resubmit or approve it. If the request has additional request items that were added in a later stage to which the approving user does not have proper workflow data access, details for the request item will not be displayed. After the previous participant addresses the reason for the push back and resubmits or approves, the request may return to the approver who pushed it back originally.