Overview of approvals for quotes

In business-to-business (B2B) transactions, one or more approvals are often required for quotes when special discounts are offered to customers and depending on the approval rules that are applicable for the quote.

For example, if a Field Sales Representative gives a discount in a quote that exceeds the amount that the Field Sales Representative is authorized to offer, a Supervisor may be required to approve the quote. In a more complex scenario, multiple people from multiple departments may be required to approve a quote. For example, a $500,000.00 quote for a computer company in France may have to be approved at multiple levels or by multiple people within the corresponding Sales organization. In addition, the Legal department may have to approve the quote to ensure that it complies with international regulations.

Approvals for quotes are triggered automatically by approval rules, which are based on a combination of factors, such as category ID, item attributes, user group/role and team code, customer grade, and manual discount percentage. Approval rules can be configured for the line level and the header level of quotes. If a quote violates at least one approval rule, for example, if the manual percentage discount applied in a quote exceeds the manual discount percentage of any approval rule, one or more approvals are required. If a quote requires approval, the quote is placed on hold, and the reason why the approval rule was violated is specified in the quote. The required approvers can be notified that the quote is pending their approval.

Note: Each approval in an order has a corresponding status, which indicates who has to approve the quote next in the approval sequence.

Each approver of a quote can either accept or reject the quote, but all the required approvers must approve the quote,, before it can be presented to a customer. When all the approvers have approved a quote, the hold is removed from the quote, and the quote is moved to the Approved status in the Quote Fulfillment pipeline.

Note: An approval hold, if any, will be resolved automatically when a quote is reworked.

Approval plans define the approvers who are responsible for resolving the approval rule violations triggered by a quote. Depending on the configuration of the approval plan, the quote may have to be approved simultaneously by all the approvers, or may have to be approved in a hierarchical sequence.