An opportunity in AcuityQ™ holds one or more quotes. Each quote holds a bill of materials per vendor — cost, margin, lead time and currency carried per line — rolled into a single price the customer sees. A discount outside its band cannot be issued until the named approver has recorded the approval, on that version of that quote.
Or open the demonstration estate — seeded price books, real approval chains, no form.
No mock-up stands in for the real thing here. Every behaviour on this page can be opened in the demonstration estate today.
What the module does
A quoting desk for businesses that buy from several vendors, sell one price, and have to be able to say later who allowed it.
An opportunity is the pursuit; a quote is one proposal against it. A three-vendor option and a single-vendor option are two quotes on the same opportunity, each with its own bill of materials, its own margin and its own approval state — not two spreadsheets with similar file names.
Cost, margin, lead time and currency are held on the line, grouped by the vendor you buy it from, and rolled into one number the customer reads. You purchase in several currencies and sell in one. The longest lead time on the sheet is the lead time on the quote.
Each band names its approver: the rep signs to one figure, the sales manager to a higher one, the business head above that. A quote outside its band cannot be issued — not warned about, not flagged for later. The approval is recorded against the version, not against the opportunity.
Line, vendor and quote level, beside the field where the discount is typed. The person asking for eighteen per cent can see what eighteen per cent costs before they ask, and the person approving it is not reading a number somebody else calculated.
Dated, numbered, and carrying the approval that released it and the exchange rate it was priced at. Issued versions are never edited — a change makes a new one. The document a customer produces in a meeting eight months later can be reproduced exactly.
A price book belongs to a customer segment and carries validity dates. Expiry is enforced, not warned about: an expired book cannot price a quote. Somebody extends it or the quote moves to the current book and re-prices — and the re-price is a new version, visibly.
A won quote carries its bill of materials into delivery. Nothing is re-typed, and the customer record it hands over to is the one that already carries their open cases on the service desk. That is the whole argument for keeping every desk on one record.
How it actually behaves
Governed discounting is easy to claim and easy to check. Here is the check: one quote, one policy of three bands, and the point at which it stops.
Worked example — QUO-2026-00318, version 3
Example Integrators Pvt Ltd · Price book: Enterprise, valid to 31 Mar 2027
The gold node is the band that holds an 18% discount. Until the person named there records the approval, there is no document to send: the quote is held, not flagged. The two nodes before it are not a notification chain — they are bands that do not cover this figure.
| Discount on the quote | Who signs it | What happens at 18% |
|---|---|---|
| Up to 8% | The rep who owns the quote | Not enough. The quote cannot be issued. |
| Over 8%, up to 15% | Sales manager for that desk | Still not enough. The quote cannot be issued. |
| Over 15% | Business head | This is the band 18% falls in. The quote waits here until they record it. |
| Outside every band | Nobody | There is no route. Either a band is added with a name against it, or the quote does not go out. |
Three bands is an example, not a limit. Bands are yours to set, by amount as well as by percentage if that is how your business thinks. What the module insists on is that every band has a person against it, and that nothing leaves outside one.
The margin figure the business head is looking at is not typed by anyone. It is the bill of materials underneath the quote, rolled up.
| Line | Vendor | Cost | Lead time | Bought in |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Core switching, two chassis | Vendor A | ₹4,10,000 | 4 weeks | INR |
| Optics, cabling and spares | Vendor A | ₹2,10,000 | 2 weeks | INR |
| Management licence, 3 years | Vendor B | ₹2,35,620 | On order | USD 2,800 @ ₹84.15 |
| Rolled into one customer price | Two vendors | ₹8,55,620 | 4 weeks | Sold in INR |
The licence line was bought in dollars. The rate used — ₹84.15 — is stamped on version 3 and does not move when the rate does. Re-pricing at a new rate produces a new version, which goes back through the band test. Figures on this page are an illustration, not a customer’s.
Honest limits
Four things a quoting tool is often assumed to cover. QuoteDesk does not, and knowing that in the first meeting is cheaper than finding out in the third.
There is no ledger, no receivables, no payment reconciliation. A won quote is handed over — lines, vendors, currency, rate, version and the approval behind it — to whatever raises your invoice. Where a finance system can accept that hand-over, it is set up during deployment.
No inventory, no warehouse, no serial numbers on a shelf. A bill of materials says what you intend to buy and what it costs. It does not know whether two of them are already in a cupboard in Pune.
A quote is issued as a document; getting it signed is a separate service and you will already have one. The signed copy attaches to the version it belongs to, which is the part that matters for the trail.
Tax is computed on rates you configure and shows on the document. It does not decide place of supply, handle reverse charge, or keep up with a change in the law on your behalf. Complicated indirect tax belongs in your finance system.
Questions
Not from AcuityQ. A quote outside its band does not produce a document: there is no issued version to attach to a mail, because issuing is the thing the approval releases. The request sits with the named approver and is visible on the quote, with the time it was raised.
A rep can, of course, send an earlier version that was properly approved. That is fine, and it is exactly why versions are dated and kept — you can see which document went out and what was signed off in it.
A band names a role, and more than one person can hold that role, so a second approver is normally the answer. Where the band genuinely belongs to one person, a delegate is named for a period and the approval records both — who held the band and who acted on it.
What does not happen is a quote leaving because somebody was unreachable. If that trade-off is wrong for your business, the honest fix is a wider band for the manager, not a bypass — and a wider band is a decision with a name on it.
A new version. The issued version is never edited — it is what the customer has, and a record that can be changed after the fact is not a record. The new version carries the new discount, and the band test runs again on it.
Both versions stay on the quote, dated, each with the approval that released it. When a customer quotes a price back at you in month five, you can see which version they are holding and who allowed that figure.
Yes, and most organisations do once they see what actually gets requested. Bands are configuration; a change is made by someone with the capability and recorded with who and when.
Quotes already approved keep the band they were approved under — tightening a band on Tuesday does not retrospectively make last week’s approvals irregular. Quotes still open are tested against the new policy the next time they are issued, which is usually the point of making the change.
The quote stops pricing on it. Expiry is enforced rather than warned about, because a warning is a thing somebody clicks past on a Friday evening and an expired price is a margin you have already lost.
Two ways out, both deliberate: someone with the capability extends the book’s validity — recorded — or the quote moves to the current book and re-prices. The re-price is a new version, so the customer’s old figure and the new one are both on the record, and the discount on the new one goes through its band again.
Tell us the deal that went out at a figure you only found out about later. We will build that policy on a desk and show you where it would have stopped. A person replies within one working day.
How the service desk behaves Roles, capabilities and the change trail