Quotes that follow your process, not the other way around

Most quoting tools treat a quote as a document with a status field. Anyone can set the status to anything, an approved quote can be edited five minutes after the approval, and when a customer asks what changed since the last version, the answer is a dig through email attachments. Discounts get approved in chat, nobody records why a deal was lost, and finance hears about margin erosion after the order ships.

The cost is not one bad quote. It is a sales process that exists only in people's heads, applied differently by every rep and impossible to audit when it matters.

A quote on Neblex is a governed record: its lifecycle, locks, approvals, and history are enforced on the server.

The quote list is paginated and filterable by status, and search matches quote number, name, description, comments, and quote type. Four tiles summarize the visible rows: Total Quotes, Total Value, Draft, and Approved, with a Locked badge counting quotes that can no longer be edited or deleted.

Line items come in two kinds: a manual item, a single catalog part with a quantity, and a configured item, the output of the product configurator added as one line with its options, price, and lead time. Rows show cost, list price, net price, discount, and margin, with the cost and margin columns gated by field permissions. Rows can be dragged into a new order, duplicated, or deleted, and a configured line has a bill of materials behind it.

Stages are defined by your administrator on the quote layout, in the names and order that fit your process, and a stage strip on the quote shows where it sits. Moving a quote is a server action: the platform checks that the target is a real stage, evaluates the transition rule for that from-and-to pair, and refuses the move if the rule says to block. A quote entering a finalizing stage must carry a business outcome other than Open, so a closed deal always says whether it was Won, Lost, No Bid, Cancelled, or Abandoned.

Three locks protect a quote, each with its own recovery path. A snapshot lock applies when the quote reaches a status your administrator has marked as a snapshot status, such as Closed-Won; the way forward is a revision, or an admin or superuser unlocking it back to an earlier, non-final stage. An awaiting-approval lock applies while a request is open and cannot be cleared by an admin, only by the approval being approved or rejected. An expiry lock applies once the Valid Until date passes; an admin or superuser clears it by extending the date.

Revisions and versions keep history honest. Create Revision starts a new editable copy with an incremented revision number and asks for an optional label and comment. View Versions opens the history, where any earlier version can be compared with the current one or restored. Each version is a complete snapshot, line items included.

Approvals are triggered by conditions, not by a rep remembering to ask. Each workflow has a trigger expression over any quote field, a list of approvers, and a type: parallel, where every approver is notified at once, or sequential, where each is notified after the previous one approves. When a trigger matches, the quote moves to Needs Approval, remembers the status it came from, and locks. Approval returns the quote to that prior status. Rejection closes the remaining steps and returns the quote too, and a save with the rejected condition still true is refused until the condition clears.

Approvers act where they are. Every request lands in the My Approvals inbox and on the Approvals tab of the quote. The notification email carries separate approve and reject links, each signed and valid for 2 days, that open the request without a login and confirm it is still active before accepting a decision. Each step records who acted, when, and any comment. An approver who will be away sets a delegate on their profile, with start and end dates and a pause switch; new requests in that window go to the delegate, with the original approver recorded on the step. Each workflow can also carry reminder settings (a start delay, an interval, a maximum count) and an expiry window, stored with the request.

Sharing produces a customer-safe view. The Share Quote tab emails a link to up to 5 recipients per share, valid between 1 and 30 days (7 by default). The shared view and its PDF hide cost and margin. Sharing is refused when the quote is locked, expired, or has no line items, and is limited to 10 share actions per hour. Each link records an access count and last access time. Unshare is all-or-nothing: it wipes the share token and removes the customer-safe PDF, so every link stops working at once.

Credit splits divide credit on shared deals. Assign a percentage to up to 25 users; the shares must sum to exactly 100, each must be greater than 0, and the person saving the split cannot include themselves. Attainment dashboards then follow the split.

Margin analysis is a tab on the quote: total cost, total revenue, current margin, and a comparison against your average won-deal margin, with commentary on lines that fall below benchmark.

• Quote Designer. Everything a rep sees on a quote is a widget an administrator placed: tabs, sections, rows of 1 to 4 columns, standard and custom fields, the line item table, the customer picker, the stage strip, and every action button. Preview renders the layout against a sample quote before you save.
• One default layout. Exactly one layout is the default at any time, and it applies to every quote in your environment. Author other layouts and switch the default when ready; the default cannot be deleted while it is the default.
• Stage rules and transition rules. Stage Rules require conditions before a quote enters or leaves a stage, such as a margin floor before Proposal. Transition Rules are written per from-and-to pair and block the move when their expression is true.
• Conditional field rules. Show, hide, or require individual fields based on the quote's state: hide the discount code on a renewal, require a comment when the discount passes a threshold.
• Approval workflow designer. Name each workflow, write its trigger, pick its approvers and order, choose parallel or sequential, allow or disallow delegation, and set reminders and expiry.
• Matt, the Neblex AI Assistant. Ask Matt how to express a transition rule or an approval trigger and it explains the expression or drafts one for you to review and paste in. Matt advises and drafts; it never changes a layout or a quote on its own.
• Integration. Stage changes, version creation, and restores each publish an event to the event feed, and the same operations are available through the REST API or through Neblex Integration Fabric.

• Paginated quote list with search, a status filter, and KPI tiles
• Manual and configured line items with drag reorder and a bill of materials behind each configured line
• Transition rules per from-and-to pair that can block a move, and stage rules that guard entry and exit
• A required business outcome (Won, Lost, No Bid, Cancelled, Abandoned) before a quote reaches a finalizing status
• Three lock reasons (snapshot, awaiting approval, expiry), each with its own recovery path, including admin or superuser unlock
• Revisions with label and comment, and full version snapshots with compare and restore
• Approval workflows triggered by expressions over any quote field
• Sequential or parallel steps, with the prior status restored on approval or rejection
• Delegation with start and end dates and a pause switch, recorded on each step
• Signed approve and reject links in email, valid for 2 days, plus a My Approvals inbox and an Approvals tab
• Customer-safe sharing to up to 5 recipients, 1 to 30 day lifetime, cost and margin hidden, per-recipient access counts
• All-or-nothing unshare that invalidates every link at once
• Credit splits across up to 25 users summing to exactly 100 percent
• Quote Designer with tabs, sections, rows, widgets, conditional field rules, and one default layout for your environment

The process has five stages: Draft, Internal Review, Customer Review, Closed-Won, and Closed-Lost. The last two are snapshot statuses.

1. 1The rep builds the quote. Two configured lines come from the configurator and one manual line adds installation. The rep drags the service line to the bottom and opens the bill of materials behind the first configured line.
2. 2The rep moves the quote to Internal Review. The transition rule for Draft to Internal Review blocks the move when the quote has no line items. It has three, so the move succeeds.
3. 3A 22 percent discount trips an approval. The trigger fires on the discount percentage, so the quote moves to Needs Approval, remembers Internal Review, and locks. The workflow is sequential, so only the sales manager is notified.
4. 4The manager is on leave. Her profile has a delegate with dates covering this week, so the step is assigned to the delegate and records who it was delegated from. The delegate approves from the signed link in the email, without logging in.
5. 5Finance is next. Only now is the second step notified. The finance approver opens My Approvals, adds a comment, and approves; the quote returns to Internal Review, unlocked.
6. 6The rep shares it with the customer. Three recipients, 14 days, cost and margin hidden. When one contact leaves the company, the rep unshares, invalidating all three links, and re-shares to the other two.
7. 7The customer accepts. The rep sets the business outcome to Won and moves the quote to Closed-Won. Because Closed-Won is a snapshot status, the move requires that outcome, and the quote locks.
8. 8A late change arrives. The customer wants one more unit. Create Revision, labeled "Added unit," gives the rep an editable revision 2 while revision 1 stays intact. Two reps worked the deal, so a 60 and 40 credit split is saved.

None of that depended on someone remembering the process; the rule, the trigger, the lock, and the outcome requirement all ran on the server.