How can I lock down, detect or redesign this workflow for vendors

I inherited a vendor workflow for approvals. The workflow sets the inactive flag = true on vendors when they are updated. The workflow then requires a submit of the record. Once submitted, given appropriate role, another person can use the "Approve" button to approve the vendor and the workflow changes the Inactive flag to false.

I cannot get a User Event script to prevent this from bypassing the workflow when a user does the following action:

Opens Vendor List. Clicks "Show inactives", Changes the Inactive flag, clicks "Submit".

In addition, I wrote a detect saved search that will show me all vendors where the inactive flag is not set and the Vendor Status is <> "Approved". This workflow is set up to email me if "Send Email Alerts When Records are Created/Updated".