Internal approval should protect margin, not become a second sales cycle.
Draw your approval chain on one page
- Who can send under £5k without sign-off?
- Who must review custom scope or non-standard pricing?
- Who checks delivery capacity before commit?
- What is the SLA for each approver (hours, not days)?
Rules that keep deals moving
- Approvals happen in the system, not in a Slack thread that gets lost.
- Rejections require a reason code (pricing, scope, capacity, legal).
- Emergency sends need a post-hoc review within 48 hours, not a blank cheque.
Version one
One proposal type, two approvers max, email notifications when stuck > 4 hours. Automate reminders before you automate logic.
Use this as a working checklist inside your team first. When the same steps repeat every week and spreadsheets start breaking, that is usually the moment to scope a reusable pricing flow with plan rules, trial logic, internal sign-off and checkout-ready handoff as an owned system. See the relevant Standen service · More guides · SaaS ops audit.