Quote Lifecycle
A quote normally moves from a customer draft to a submitted request, a reviewed offer, customer acceptance, and finally an order. SoftwareSilo B2B Quote separates the fixed lifecycle state from the business-facing status, so teams can use helpful labels without changing how the extension behaves.
Fixed quote states
| State | What happens here |
|---|---|
| Draft | The request is still being prepared. Items, quantities, notes, and addresses can be completed before submission. |
| Submitted | The customer has sent the request to the merchant. |
| In Review | The merchant and customer can work through product, pricing, delivery, and message details. |
| Approved | The merchant has released an offer for the customer. |
| Accepted | The customer has accepted the offer. Depending on configuration, this creates an order directly or puts the agreed items into the cart. |
| Ordered | The quote has been converted into a Magento order. |
| Rejected | The current offer was declined. A configured transition can still allow the workflow to continue. |
| Expired | The validity period ended. |
| Cancelled | The quote was cancelled. |
Ordered, Expired, and Cancelled are final states.
States and statuses are different
States are fixed because application logic depends on them. Statuses are configurable, store-scoped labels assigned to a state.
For example, a merchant can create Commercial Review and Technical Review as two statuses under the fixed In Review state. People see the precise next step, while the extension still knows that both quotes are in review.
See Quote Statuses and Status Transitions.
A practical request-to-order flow
- The customer creates a draft from product pages, the cart, an earlier order, or an agreement call-off.
- The customer completes the request and submits it.
- Sales reviews availability, requested quantities, addresses, shipping, messages, and attachments.
- Sales sets offered prices, discounts, fees, and expiration, then approves the offer.
- The customer accepts, sends a counter offer, or follows another configured transition.
- Acceptance either creates an order directly or moves the agreed items into the cart for normal checkout.
- The quote retains its messages, attachments, and revision history as the record of the negotiation.
Guest requests follow the same commercial idea but use a secure access token instead of a customer account. Agreements can turn an eligible customer quote into a reusable purchasing arrangement with later call-offs.
Designing your status map
Start with the shortest process that reflects how sales actually works. Add statuses only where they communicate a distinct responsibility or next action. For every status, decide:
- who may move into and out of it;
- whether a note is required;
- who receives a notification;
- what the next valid statuses are;
- whether automation should follow the same transitions as people.
Do not use a new status merely as a reporting tag. Categories and tags are better for classification that does not change workflow.