An approval in contractor management software is a recorded act, not a mood. A named person, on the live version of the quote, ticks a line that states the exact total, presses approve, and the system writes down who, what figure, which version and when. "Yeah, let's do it" in the yard is not an approval. It is the reason you later argue about whether the $2,400 wainscot was in.
How the approve block is built and branded is on the quote your customer reads page; this is the what and the why.
What does an approval record?
Four facts, and all four have to be there or it is not an approval:
| Fact | Why it matters on a post-frame job |
|---|---|
| Who | The named person who pressed the button, tied to the contact on the lead. Not "the customer"; the customer. |
| The exact figure | The affirmation they tick names the dollar total, e.g. $68,400 for a 40x60 with two 14-foot overhead doors. They are agreeing to a number, not to a building. |
| Which version | Quotes get revised. The approval binds to the version that was live when they pressed it, with its colours, services and payment stages as they stood. |
| When | A timestamp. It settles "I approved that before the steel price went up" in one glance. |
The pain this replaces is the verbal yes: a customer says go, you order trusses for a 60-foot span, and three weeks later the conversation is about whether they ever agreed to the 12-foot lean-to. One dark block at the end of the quote, wearing your brand, holds the affirmation naming the exact figure and an Approve & Start My Project button that stays dead until the line is ticked.
It works that way because a tick beside a number is harder to misremember than a conversation. The customer cannot approve without reading the total, and you cannot later claim they approved something the page did not show.
Who produces an approval?
The customer, on their own page, and nobody else. Your office cannot approve on their behalf; a sales rep cannot approve from the truck. An approval you entered because they said yes on the phone carries your word, not theirs. An approval they pressed carries theirs.
Under the U.S. ESIGN Act, a record or signature cannot be denied legal effect solely because it is electronic, and the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act does the same work at state level. The approval is not your contract; the agreement that follows is. But it is a dated electronic record of intent from an identified person, which is exactly what a "he said he wanted it" argument lacks.
What does an approval feed?
The approve stage. The moment they press it, three things move at once, and none of them needs a person to carry a number across:
- The customer's link advances from Estimate to Your Details. The next thing they see is the project questionnaire, pre-filled with what you already hold. What that form holds and why it writes the contract is its own artifact.
- The agreement begins from the approved figure. Contracts that write themselves from the estimate start here, and the price the contract carries is the price that was approved. There is no step between where a total can be retyped.
- The approved version freezes. You can keep dragging the model around on your side; their page still shows what they approved.
That chain, one link becoming the estimate, then the form, then the agreement, then the live project, is the Live Estimate System. The approval is the hinge in it: everything before it is a quote that can change, everything after it is a job that was agreed.
What is an approval not?
It is not a signature. The agreement still has to be generated, read by you, signed by them and counter-signed by you. Treat an approval as "build the contract now", not "we have a contract".
It is not a deposit. No money moves at approval. The deposit is the first line of the payment schedule and becomes an invoice off that schedule.
It is not a start date. A customer who has just approved assumes the crew is coming Monday. The approval opens the questionnaire; the schedule exists only after the contract is executed and you press Start Project.
It is not always the live version. A customer can be sitting on an older link from an old email. If what they approved is not what is currently live, the job says so on your side.
That warning exists because the honest failure mode of any versioned quote is the customer approving the one with the 26-gauge steel when you re-quoted at 29-gauge. The system cannot stop them opening an old email; it can refuse to let the mismatch slide silently into a contract.
What changes once an approval exists?
- The argument about scope has a document. Options that were on the quote at the approved version are in; options that were not are a change order, priced and signed separately. The change order that protects margin depends on this line being clean.
- The customer's copy stops following your edits. Before approval, edits to services, labour, markup or colours push into their copy automatically. After it, the approved version is what they see, and a change is a new version.
- You know when to call. Open and view tracking tells you they read it; the approval tells you they agreed. An approval at 9:40 pm on a Tuesday is a deposit invoice to send in the morning.
- The lead card moves. The pipeline stage is reached by the customer's act, not by someone remembering to drag a card.
If you are still working out whether this whole lead-to-paid record is the right shape for your company, what contractor management software actually runs on a 40x60 walks the handoffs, and the approval is the one where the price most often changes hands by mistake.
Who is an approval not for?
A commercial buyer with a procurement department does not approve on a page; they issue a purchase order against your quote, and the PO is the artifact. A kit sale to another builder is the same. The approval as defined here is for the owner-buyer: the farmer, the hobbyist, the family building a barndominium, the small business putting up a shop. That is the buyer who otherwise says yes on the phone.
It also stops at intent. An approval proves they agreed to $68,400 for this building on this date. It does not prove they own the land or that the county will permit a 16-foot sidewall. Those come from the questionnaire and from your own diligence.
Checklist before you rely on approvals
- Make the affirmation name the exact total, so what they tick is the number, not a vague "I accept".
- Turn on view tracking, so an approval that never comes is visible as a quote that was never opened.
- Decide who on your team is told the moment an approval lands, so the deposit invoice goes out the same day.
- Read the divergence warning every time; never generate a contract over an approval that does not match the live version.
The open loop is money. An approval records agreement; it does not collect the deposit, and a customer who approves and then goes quiet for two weeks has agreed to nothing you can bank. The deposit is a line on the payment schedule and an invoice off it, and that is a different artifact with its own rules.
