Quotes — Workflow

Overview

Quotes move through defined internal stages before being sent to a customer. Quote Engine supports the costing and profit stages; Sales manages commercial progression, customer delivery, and closure.

Note

This feature follows SARA's standard record lifecycle model. See: Workflows & Pipelines

Roles involved

Sales — Creates quotes, progresses stages, sends ready quotes, closes commercial outcomes, and approves accepted quotes.
Concept owners — Complete the Concept stage for standard quotes.
Quote Engine responsibles — Enter costs for their assigned nodes.
Quote Engine administrators — Manage nodes, responsible assignments, templates, and loss reasons while a quote is editable.
Skip approvers — Approve or reject requests to bypass stages.

Status lifecycle

Status	Meaning
`CINF`	Collecting information. Sales gathers the customer scope and requirements.
`CONC`	Concept. The technical team is working on the concept.
`PECO`	Pending costing. Assigned responsibles enter costs for all required Quote Engine elements.
`PEPR`	Pending profit. Sales enters profit values for the cost elements.
`REDY`	Ready. The quote is complete internally and ready to send.
`SENT`	Sent to the customer and awaiting a response.
`APPR`	Approved. The customer accepted the quote and SARA creates or updates a project.
`CANC`	Cancelled internally before the quote was sent.
`LOST`	Not completed. The quote was sent but did not result in a sale.
`EXPR`	Expired. The validity period elapsed and Sales must mark the quote as not completed or duplicate it.
`IGNR`	Ignored in metrics. The quote is excluded from cancellation and loss statistics.

Info

EXPR is not a final commercial outcome. It cannot be approved directly; use Mark as not completed or Duplicate.

For system-wide status guidance, see: Status

Status diagram

stateDiagram-v2
    [*] --> CINF : Create quote
    CINF --> CONC : Advance
    CONC --> PECO : Standard quote concept complete
    CONC --> REDY : Dynamic budget quote ready
    PECO --> PEPR : All costs complete
    PEPR --> REDY : All profit values complete
    REDY --> SENT : Send quote
    SENT --> APPR : Customer PO received
    SENT --> LOST : Not completed
    SENT --> EXPR : Validity elapsed
    EXPR --> LOST : Mark as not completed
    CINF --> CANC : Cancel
    CONC --> CANC : Cancel
    PECO --> CANC : Cancel
    PEPR --> CANC : Cancel
    REDY --> CANC : Cancel

Workflow

Workflow steps

Sales creates a quote in CINF.
The quote advances through Concept, Costing, and Profit as applicable.
Sales sends the quote from REDY.
Sales records the customer outcome or excludes an alternative quote from metrics.

Collecting information and concept

New quotes start in Collecting information (CINF). Sales advances them to Concept (CONC) when the required information is available.

For a standard quote, a user with advance quote concept or manage quote progression completes the Concept stage and moves the quote to Pending costing (PECO). Dynamic budget quotes move from CONC directly to Ready (REDY).

Costing and profit

During Pending costing (PECO), Quote Engine responsibles enter cost values for their assigned elements. Once every required element has a cost, the quote can move to Pending profit (PEPR).

During PEPR, Sales enters profit values. Once every required element has a profit value, the quote can move to Ready (REDY).

Tip

Remove nodes that do not require a cost. An incomplete node prevents the quote from progressing through the costing stage.

Ready and sent

At Ready (REDY), Quote Engine data becomes read-only. Sales sends the quote to the customer from the quote screen, generating the customer PDF version and moving the quote to Sent (SENT).

Customer outcome

For a sent quote, Sales records one of these outcomes:

Approve (APPR) when the customer PO is received. SARA creates a project, or increases the linked project budget for a complementary quote.
Mark as not completed (LOST) when the customer does not proceed. A loss reason is required; a note is optional.
Cancel (CANC) when the internal team stops the process before sending the quote.

An existing project with no quote can be connected later from Projects → Link quote. The selector offers sent, unlinked quotes for the same customer and internal company; the project action can avoid creating another CPO when one is already registered. The link handler sets the quote to APPR and connects the existing project, without running the Quotes page's approval form or creating a new project. See Projects workflow.

Expiration

SARA moves sent quotes to Expired (EXPR) when their validity period elapses. From EXPR, Sales must either mark the quote as not completed with a loss reason or duplicate it to prepare a revised quote.

Ignore in metrics

Sales can move a quote to Ignored in metrics (IGNR) to exclude it from cancellation and loss statistics. Use this when the team prepares two or more concept or price alternatives for the same opportunity and only one alternative can be selected.

Rollback and skip requests

Sales users with manage quote progression can roll a pre-sent quote back one stage when changes are needed:

CONC to CINF
PECO to CONC
PEPR to PECO
REDY to PEPR

To bypass stages, a Sales user submits a request with a reason. The quote remains at its current stage until a user with approve skip status approves the request. Only one skip request can be pending per quote.

Notifications

SARA notifies the responsible users as the quote advances through the internal stages and sends a weekly digest to users with manage quote progression or Quotation engine responsible.

The digest highlights sent quotes requiring follow-up, quotes pending internal attention, and quotes approaching or reaching expiration.