How to: Letting Reps Know Their Quote Needs Approval
“Does My Quote Need Approval?”
Letting Reps Know Before Quote is Sent
“It’s the end of the quarter and I need to generate a quote within the next half hour for the customer to sign. I’ve created my quote and hit submit for approval. Oh-no! It has to go to the VP of Sales and he’s on a plane right now!”
Sound familiar? This happens all the time—a Sales rep is rushing to meet quota, and the customer is ready to sign! Fantastic. But the rep adds just a bit too much of a discount, so the sales Quote has to go to a superior for review, first.
“Is there some way to get the quote out the door faster? If only I knew that it needed approval before submitting, I’d avoid this altogether. ”

She sits, and waits, and waits, and waits…
The waiting game
As a Salesforce administrator, you know there is room for significant improvement to the process. You also may be encouraged by others at the company to “just make Salesforce work.” So how do we make this “waiting game” a little shorter and make life a little easier for you and your colleagues in the Sales department?
We’ve found it to be extremely helpful to add visual indicators in the quoting process. The visual indicators show the user ahead of time whether their quote will require approval.
Nix the waiting game
If the sales rep doesn’t have the time for the quote to be renewed, they will then always have the option to adjust the quote to ensure it is auto-approved.
Visual indicators also provide a great way for new sales reps to learn discounting thresholds without needing to pull open the last quarterly sales slide deck or ask another sales rep that is on the phone closing his or her own deal.
Let’s get visual, visual
Creating visual indicators is an easy two-step process that will improve the quoting experience for end users.
Creating a Formula Field that Returns Visual Indicators
If you are newer to creating formula fields, no problem. There is a handy function called Image() that you may want to tuck away for later. The Image() function returns an image instead of text, which can be any image you want to use.
In our case, we need three different images to illustrate our process.
- ✔️ Good to Go: We need a positive image that is easily understood to indicate the quote is within the acceptable discount range.
- ⚠️ You’re Getting Close: We’d want to use this indicator to identify one of two things: either the quote is getting close to the threshold; or, the quote needs approval from the immediate supervisor. But nothing beyond that.
- 🛑 OVER THE LINE!: The quote went over the acceptable discount threshold. The quote definitely needs approval.