Quote and Discount Approval: One Price Everyone Knows

Quote and Discount Approval: One Price Everyone Knows

Quote and discount approval stays under control with four rules: one price list with validity dates that everyone prices from, numbered quotes where a new version never overwrites one the customer has already seen, a margin the approver sees before the quote goes out, and a discount approval matrix whose levels the owner sets and the system enforces, rather than memory. When the customer accepts a specific version, it becomes the sales order or contract that every later delivery, invoice and dispute points back to.

In part one we mapped selling on credit as seven stations and suggested an exercise: trace your ten oldest unpaid invoices back to their quote, their order and their proof of delivery. The first document you looked for was the quote the customer accepted. If you found a quote with three versions and nobody sure which one was accepted, or a discount nobody can say who gave, this is where we start. What comes before the quote, following up opportunities and prospects, sits outside this series; we covered it in our CRM guide for Saudi businesses.

One price list with validity dates

Many companies have more than one price for the same item without anyone deciding so: a price in the spreadsheet the manager updated last month, a price in the last quote one salesperson sent to a similar customer and a colleague copied, and a price in the accounting system that has not been updated for a while. Each salesperson prices from the source closest to hand, so two similar customers receive two different prices, and nobody meant it.

The fix is a single source for price, with an owner. The price list carries each item or service with its price and unit, and it has a start date and an end date. It takes the shape of each sector:

• Factory or distributor. A price per item and sales unit, possibly with a list per customer group, such as wholesale and projects, where the owner decides who belongs in each group.
• Contractor. Unit rates for recurring work items, used to price the bill of quantities in each quote, alongside items priced project by project.
• Maintenance company or property operator. The price of a visit, an hour or a monthly contract for a defined scope, and what that price includes versus what is charged on top, such as spare parts and additional work.

When a price changes, you do not edit the old list; you issue a new one with a new start date. Every quote issued before the change stays tied to the price it was issued at, and no number changes on a quote the customer has seen because someone updated the list afterwards. Editing the list is the authority of one role the owner names, while the salesperson picks from the list rather than typing a price.

A special price for one customer is an agreement with an end date. A large customer gets a better price on certain items, or a framework agreement sets unit rates for a fixed period, or an annual maintenance contract fixes the price of a visit. These prices often live in a salesperson's memory or in a WhatsApp thread with the customer's buyer, so when the salesperson moves on the price goes with them, and when a colleague quotes the same customer a different price comes out. It works better to record the special price as an agreement on the customer record: the items or categories it covers, the price or discount, the start and end dates, any condition attached, and who approved it. The system then applies it to that customer's quotes and invoices on its own and warns before it expires, so renewal becomes a decision someone makes rather than a habit that continues because nobody noticed.

Numbered quotes: every version stays as the customer saw it

In part one we described a discount that appeared in a revised version sent on WhatsApp and never saved with the order. It happens because quotes are usually revised in the same file: the salesperson opens the quote, changes the price or the quantity, and saves over the previous version. Two weeks later the customer accepts the quote, but which version? The one on the salesperson's laptop is not necessarily the one on the customer's.

The rule is simple: every quote has a number, every revision is a new version under that number, and a version that has been sent is never edited. The system keeps each version exactly as it went out, with its date, who sent it and to whom, so when the customer says the price in your quote was different, you open the version they received that day instead of arguing from memory. The quote file is generated from the record itself, so what the customer saw is exactly what is in the system. You then send it on WhatsApp or by email, whichever your customer is used to; the channel does not matter as long as the file came from the record.

The quote also carries what everyone downstream will need, not just the price:

• A validity period. A quote with no expiry date stays open, and the customer comes back months later to accept a price whose cost has moved. Once it expires, it is repriced in a new version.
• Payment terms. As the owner sets them for this customer, which is the subject of the next part.
• Scope and exclusions. In contracting and maintenance a dispute can start months later from a line nobody wrote: is debris removal and cleaning included in the price? Are spare parts covered by the monthly contract?
• The customer's reference. Their request number or project name, because their accounts team will match your invoice against it later.

When the customer accepts a specific version, that version becomes a sales order or contract, and the customer's purchase order number is saved with it if they sent one. From that moment every delivery, invoice and dispute points to this order, so from any invoice you can reach the price the customer accepted and who approved its discount, which is exactly what you were looking for in the part one exercise.

The margin in front of the approver before the quote goes out

When a salesperson asks for a discount to be approved, the approver often sees a single number, the price after discount, and decides on experience without the figure they actually need. The real question is: how much is left for us after this discount? That needs a cost next to the price, and where the cost comes from depends on the sector:

• Factory and distributor. The item cost from the item card: the purchase cost, or the manufacturing cost if you make it. That number is only as accurate as the inventory and costing behind it.
• Contractor. The estimated cost of each bill-of-quantities item in materials, labour, equipment and subcontractors, with the margin calculated per item and for the quote as a whole.
• Maintenance company. The cost of the scope itself: the number of visits, technician hours, and the materials and spare parts included in the price.

The approver then sees on one screen the list price, the requested price, the cost, the margin before and after the discount, and the reason as the salesperson wrote it: a competitor's price, a large quantity, or a new customer in a sector the company wants to enter. The same discount can be acceptable on one quote and not on another, because the margin behind each is different.

Who sees cost and margin is a permissions decision before it is a sales decision. The owner may decide that salespeople see the margin so they negotiate knowing their limits, or that only approvers see it; both are legitimate as long as the system enforces the choice. We explained the principle in Permissions: who sees what once data leaves the file: a cost sheet passed around as a file reaches people nobody intended it to reach.

The discount approval matrix: who approves which discount?

A discount approval matrix is a table that answers one question: how far can a salesperson discount without asking, and who approves anything beyond that? It is the same logic we covered on the buying side in Purchase requests and approval limits, seen from the other side: there you control what leaves your money, here you control what you give away before it arrives.

The levels themselves, what the salesperson can approve, what goes to the sales manager, and what reaches the finance manager or the owner, are set by the owner, because they reflect the company's own margins and markets. There is no universally right limit, and a limit borrowed from another company may be too tight and stall sales, or too loose and control nothing. The owner can base the levels on the discount rate, or on the margin left after it; the second stops a discount that looks small on an item whose margin is already thin.

More important than the numbers is knowing what counts as a discount, because a price concession does not always arrive on a line called discount:

• An explicit discount on a quote line or on the quote total.
• Extra quantity at no charge, or delivery and installation that are normally charged and are now free.
• Longer payment terms than this customer's usual terms, because that is financing you provide from your own cash.
• Extra visits on a maintenance contract, a longer warranty than usual, or small out-of-scope work at no charge.

All of these go through the same matrix; otherwise you control the written discount and leave the unwritten concession uncontrolled. The rules from the buying side apply here too: nobody approves their own discount, authority belongs to the role rather than the person, every approver has a named delegate for when they are away, and the approval is recorded on the quote version itself with the approver's name and time, so if the version changes after approval it goes back to them. The request reaches the approver's phone as a link they can approve from without opening a laptop, because slow approval is what pushes a salesperson into a promise on the phone.

Why before the invoice and not after? A discount approved in the quote is part of the price and appears on the invoice the first time. A discount promised after the sale takes a different path under the VAT Implementing Regulations: Article 40(1) lists among the cases that change the value of a supply a value agreed in advance and then changed for any reason, including an additional discount offered after the sale is completed. If that happens after the tax invoice is issued and the VAT on it exceeds the VAT due, Article 54 requires a credit note that clearly references the original invoice, issued no later than the 15th of the month following the event. So a discount given on a call after the invoice does not stay between the salesperson and the customer; it becomes a tax document with a deadline, and finance may not know it has to issue one. For a specific case, the place to ask is your tax adviser.

The Origami view

When we build the quoting workflow for a company, we start from how it actually prices today: where salespeople take prices from, how many versions a quote usually goes through, who approves discounts, and where the special prices for key customers live. A discount granted on the phone tells us where the current approval is too slow, before it tells us where control needs tightening.

Then we turn that into a workflow the system enforces: a price list with validity dates, quotes in numbered versions whose files come from the record, a margin shown to each role according to its permissions, a discount matrix whose levels the owner adjusts without a programmer, approvals that reach the phone, and an accepted quote that becomes a sales order connected to your accounting system and e-invoicing. This is part of the custom systems we build as part of our services.

An exercise for this week: review the last twenty quotes your customers accepted

Before any system, you need a picture of what actually happens between the price list and the customer. A sales manager and a finance manager can run this in one or two sessions:

• Pull the last twenty quotes customers accepted, and add the quotes behind the ten invoices from the part one exercise if you found them.
• For each quote, ask where the price came from: the current price list, an earlier quote, or typed by hand.
• Count the versions of each quote, identify the version the customer accepted, and check whether you can find it exactly as they saw it.
• List every concession in the quote: a discount, free quantity, free delivery, longer payment terms or extra visits, and next to each one who approved it and where that approval is recorded.
• Note whether the margin was known to whoever approved the quote at the moment they approved it.

The number of concessions nobody can say who approved is your baseline for this part. Then write the discount matrix you want on one page: what counts as a discount in your company, the levels that suit it, the role that approves each level, and who stands in when an approver is away. The gap between that page and what you found in the twenty quotes is what the system needs to close.

In the next part

Price now has one source, quotes have preserved versions, and every discount has an approver everyone knows. The next part moves to the station before the first shipment: credit limits and guarantees. We start with a customer record checked once, when the customer is added, against two free official sources, then a credit limit and payment terms the owner sets and the system checks at every order and every delivery, then the guarantees the owner can choose from before selling on terms.

Sources

• VAT Implementing Regulations, Zakat, Tax and Customs Authority (official Arabic text) — Article 40(1) (cases that change the value of a supply, including an additional discount offered after the sale is completed), and Article 54(1), 54(4) and 54(6) (credit notes, their clear reference to the original invoice, and their issue deadline).