The approval workflow

If your dealership turns on approval rules, deals don't auto-publish to the sales log. They go through a draft → review → approved cycle so a manager has eyes on every deal before it counts.

Approval is optional per dealership — if you don't set any rules, every deal saves as approved straight away.

When approval kicks in

A draft deal is automatically routed to "pending manager approval" when it hits any of these triggers (configurable in Settings → Dealership → Approval rules):

• Discount above a percentage threshold (e.g. >5% off RRP).
• Margin below a percentage threshold (e.g. <8% margin).
• Gross profit below a dollar threshold (e.g. <$1,500 GP).
• Always, regardless of numbers (set everything to 0).

You can also choose to require approval for every deal regardless of the numbers — useful while you're training a new salesperson.

What the salesperson does

After saving a deal that triggers approval, the salesperson sees a "Pending approval" badge on the deal. They can:

• Edit — depends on a dealership setting (see below).
• Withdraw — pulls the deal back to draft so they can revise without managerial pushback.
• Wait — managers get a notification (if their notification prefs include it).

Once the manager either approves or sends it back, the salesperson sees the result in their action items.

What the manager does

Pending deals appear in the manager's dashboard under the Pending approvals stack. From any pending deal, the manager can:

• Approve — deal becomes live, drops into the sales log proper.
• Send back with note — deal returns to draft, salesperson sees the note, revises, and resubmits.
• Approve and add a note — handy for "approved, but next time tighten the trade allowance".

The "edit while pending" setting

Three options under Settings → Dealership → Approval rules:

• Locked (default) — pending deals can't be edited. The salesperson must withdraw → edit → resubmit.
• Editable — the salesperson can edit a pending deal in place. Useful if your team trusts each other.
• Editable, resets approval — they can edit, but any edit kicks the deal back to draft, requiring a fresh submission.

Signatures

Approval is separate from signatures. Even an approved deal still has two checkboxes:

• Customer signed — the salesperson ticks this when the customer has signed the write-up sheet.
• Manager signed — the manager ticks this when they've countersigned for final commitment.

Both are visible on the deal detail page and editable inline from the sales log. They feed the unsigned action items so nothing gets shipped without a signature.

Cancelling a deal

Deals can be cancelled from any state. The deal stays in the sales log with a "Cancelled" status — you can filter it out with a saved view if it's adding noise. Cancellations are intentional: deleting deals would lose audit history.