When a quote has been submitted, it enters a Workflow, where the necessary steps to fulfill the quote are done in order, by people or automated processes.
Each company has a different way to fulfill a quote, based on their internal needs. For example, one company may have a simple workflow, where your quote is reviewed by an engineering tieam, then booked into an order by an ERP team. Another company's workflow could be complex with branching and looping to get everything done: the quote's path through that workflow could depend on certain properties of the quote, such as whether it relates to a specific customer, contains a certain product, or exceeds a threshold price.
Usually, after you submit a quote, it is locked to you. You can simply see it progress through the workflow. You may get email alerts, informing you of the quote's progress.
Depending on the state a quote is in, you may find that certain properties of the quote that were visible at one time are no longer visible and vice versa. In addition, certain actions may also be available to you that aren't available in other states. For example, pricing may not be visible to the customer who submitted the quote, but is visible (and editable) to the manager who is approving it. After the manager finalizes the price and approves the quote, it may then enter a final state where it's visible to everyone, but locked and impossible to edit.
Here's an example workflow.
- Upon submission of a quote, because it has a certain configured product which is very complicated, it will enter an Engineer Approval state. The workflow will generate blueprint and bill-of-material attachments which are visible only to the engineer approving it.
- The engineer may have access to make minor tweaks in case there is something that needs correcting. Otherwise, the engineer can reject it (which returns the quote back to an unsubmitted state for corrections by the creator) or approve it, which brings it to the next state, Sales Manager Review.
- Upon entering this state, the quote will generate documentation such as manuals and other information which at the time will only be available for the sales manager to review. The sales manager may specify a price adjustment before clicking an action which will advance it to the next state, Ready for Customer.
- In the complete state, the customer who originally submitted the quote has access to the end-user documentation which previously the sales manager could only see. The customer can also view the final price of the quote, which up until this point was hidden. The customer can now hit a button to accept the quote, at which point the state will change to Ordered.
Workflows may have other logic specific to the business. It is up to the admin to design this logic. Click here for more information on administering Workflows.