Streamline Your Quote Approval Workflow: Catch Errors and Protect Margins Without Creating Bottlenecks

Your estimator sends a quote for $47,000 on a commercial job. The margin looks thin but nobody checks because there’s no process for checking. The customer accepts. Three months later, the job comes in at $44,000 in costs against $47,000 in revenue — a 6% margin on a job that should have been 20%. The estimator underpriced the labour, and nobody caught it because the quote went straight from the estimator to the customer.

This is what happens without an approval workflow. It’s not that the estimator is incompetent — it’s that there’s no safety net between the quote being created and the quote going out the door.

Internal quote approval workflows exist to catch problems before they become commitments. Margin too low? Flag it. Discount too deep? Require sign-off. Technical scope unclear? Route it for review. The goal isn’t bureaucracy. It’s protection — for your margins, your reputation, and your estimators.

Why Quotes Need Review Before They Leave

In a small business where the owner does all the quoting, there’s a natural review process: the person with the most context is creating the quote. But as soon as you add a second estimator — or a junior team member, or a sales rep who quotes on the road — you’ve introduced a gap between the person quoting and the person accountable for the margin.

Without a review process, common problems slip through:

• Margin erosion. Estimators under pressure to win work shave margins to compete. Without visibility, the owner doesn’t know until the P&L arrives.
• Pricing errors. Outdated rates, missed line items, incorrect quantities. An extra zero or a missing zero on a line item changes the economics of the entire job.
• Unapproved discounts. “I gave them 10% off to win the deal” sounds reasonable until it’s happening on half the quotes, and suddenly your margins are 10% lower across the board.
• Scope mismatches. The estimator quotes for something that isn’t technically feasible, or misunderstands the specification. The customer accepts, and now you’re committed to delivering something that doesn’t match what you quoted.
• Terms and conditions gaps. Payment terms, warranty inclusions, exclusions — details that protect the business get inconsistently applied or accidentally omitted.

Designing an Approval Workflow That Doesn’t Bottleneck

The biggest fear with approval workflows is that they’ll slow everything down. And badly designed ones absolutely do. If every $500 quote needs the owner’s sign-off and the owner is on site all day, your quoting pipeline grinds to a halt.

The solution is tiered approvals: route quotes based on risk, not on existence.

Tier 1: Auto-Approve (No Review Needed)

Quotes that meet all of the following criteria go out without manual approval:

• Value under a defined threshold (e.g., under $5,000)
• Margin above a defined minimum (e.g., above 25%)
• No discounts applied
• Standard scope using an approved template
• Standard payment terms

These are your bread-and-butter quotes. They’re low risk, high volume, and the estimator has full authority to send them. Requiring approval on these quotes creates bottlenecks with no benefit.

Tier 2: Manager Approval

Quotes that trigger one or more conditions require a manager’s review before sending:

• Value over the auto-approve threshold
• Margin below the minimum threshold
• Discount applied (any amount)
• Custom scope not based on a standard template
• Non-standard payment terms

The manager reviews the flagged items, approves or requests changes, and the quote goes out. This should take minutes, not days. If your approval process regularly takes more than 24 hours, the threshold is too low or the approver is overloaded.

Tier 3: Owner/Director Approval

Reserved for quotes that carry significant business risk:

• Value above a high threshold (e.g., over $50,000)
• Margin below a critical floor (e.g., below 15%)
• Discount exceeding a defined maximum (e.g., over 15%)
• Non-standard contractual terms or obligations
• New customer types or unfamiliar scopes

These are the quotes where a wrong decision has meaningful financial consequences. They deserve scrutiny — and the people signing off should have full context on costs, risks, and competitive positioning.

What to Check in a Quote Review

When a quote is flagged for approval, the reviewer should be checking specific things — not just skimming the document.

Margin check. Is the quoted margin within acceptable range for this job type? If it’s a 12% margin on a job type that normally runs at 22%, why? Is the estimator competing aggressively, or have they made a costing error?

Discount review. If a discount has been applied, what’s the justification? Repeat customer? Competitive situation? Volume commitment? Discounts without documented reasoning become habitual and erode margin across the board.

Scope accuracy. Does the quoted scope match what the customer is actually asking for? Are there exclusions that should be inclusions? Is the specification achievable with the quoted labour and materials?

Pricing currency. Are the rates in the quote current? Material prices, labour rates, subcontractor costs — when were they last updated? A quote built on six-month-old pricing could be significantly undercosted.

Terms and conditions. Are payment terms, warranty provisions, and exclusions present and correct? These are the clauses that protect you when something goes wrong. Missing them is a risk that no margin can compensate for.

Handling Approvals Without Slowing Down

The number one reason approval workflows fail is speed. If the approval process adds two days to the quoting cycle, your estimators will work around it — and then you have no process at all.

Set response time expectations. Tier 2 approvals should be completed within 4 business hours. Tier 3 within 24 hours. If the approver can’t respond in that window, designate a backup approver.

Make mobile approvals easy. Most approvers are not sitting at a desk. They’re on site, in meetings, or in the car. The approval notification needs to reach them on their phone, with enough context to make a decision without opening a laptop. A push notification with the quote summary, margin, and an approve/reject button is the gold standard.

Don’t require approval for changes under a threshold. If the reviewer asks the estimator to adjust a line item by $200 on a $15,000 quote, the revised quote shouldn’t need re-approval. Set a materiality threshold for changes — if the revision changes the total by less than 5%, the original approval stands.

Track approval times. If approvals are consistently taking longer than expected, something is wrong. Either the approver is overloaded (solution: raise the auto-approve threshold or add a backup), or the quotes need too much rework (solution: better templates or estimator training).

Starting Simple

You don’t need software to start an approval workflow. Here’s how to begin:

This week: Define your auto-approve criteria. What quotes can go out without anyone checking? Write it down. Anything that falls outside those criteria needs a second pair of eyes.

This month: Implement a simple flag system. A shared spreadsheet or a Slack channel where estimators post quotes that need approval with the key details: customer, value, margin, any discounts. The approver responds with a thumbs up or questions.

This quarter: Track the data. How many quotes were flagged? How many had issues that needed correction? What’s the average approval turnaround time? This data tells you whether the process is working or creating bottlenecks.

When you need more: If you’re running multiple estimators across multiple job types with complex pricing rules and discount authorities, a manual process won’t scale. That’s when a purpose-built approval system — with automatic margin checks, conditional routing, mobile notifications, and audit trails — becomes the difference between protecting your margins and hoping for the best.

The goal is simple: every quote that leaves your business should be one you’d be happy to deliver at the quoted price. An approval workflow is how you make that the default, not the exception.