How to build deal desk approvals

What matters here

• Keep the approval rules in a table RevOps can edit. Who approves a 15% discount changes more often than the workflow does.
• Send the request with the deal attached: amount, discount, term, margin and the rep's reason. An approver who has to open the CRM to decide will decide later.
• Tie the approval to the exact terms. If the quote changes after approval, the approval no longer applies.
• Escalate on silence, not on a calendar reminder. A request with no answer by its deadline goes to the next approver automatically.
• Store every decision on the opportunity, with who decided and why. That is the record the auditor and the next deal desk review both ask for.

Who this is for

You run revenue operations or the deal desk. Discount approvals happen in email threads and direct messages, nobody can say how long one takes, and quotes sometimes go out at terms nobody signed off.

How it works in practice

Everything between a rep asking for non-standard terms and the quote going to the customer.

1. 1

   The rep submits the request from the deal

   Discount, payment terms, contract length or a custom clause, with a reason. Nothing to fill in twice.

2. 2

   The rules table picks the approver

   Up to 10% the sales manager, up to 20% the regional VP, anything with custom payment terms goes to finance too.

3. 3

   The approver decides in Slack

   One message with the deal summary and Approve, Reject or Ask a question. The decision writes back to Salesforce.

4. 4

   Silence escalates

   No answer by the deadline and the request moves to the next approver, with the rep told where it is.

5. 5

   The quote is locked to the approved terms

   If the rep changes the discount after approval, the quote can't be sent until it is approved again.

6. 6

   The decision is recorded on the deal

   Who approved, what they approved, when, and the reason given, on the opportunity and in the warehouse.

Paste these into Claude Code or Codex with the Tray Headless plugin installed. Each stage runs on its own. The systems named in them are the worked example rather than a requirement, and every prompt says so.

Once per project, run /tray-workflows:set-workspace to pick the workspace these build in. Point it at a sandbox first.

1. 1

   Set up, then find where requests live today

   Approvals that start outside the deal record can't be locked to it.

   Headless skills build-workflow

   Copy

   Use build-workflow. The systems in play are Salesforce for the deal,
   DealHub for the quote, Slack for approvers and Snowflake for reporting,
   or whatever we run in those seats.
   
   I need the Opportunity and Quote objects, the discount, term length,
   payment terms and amount fields, and any approval fields that already
   exist on the quote.
   
   Tell me where approval requests come from today. If they start in email
   or direct messages, the first job is a request button on the deal.

2. 2

   Build the rules table

   The rules change every quarter. The workflow shouldn't have to.

   Headless skills build-workflow

   Copy

   Use build-workflow. Build an approval rules table I can edit, not rules
   in code:
   
     discount        deal size        approver
     up to 10%       any              sales manager
     10% to 20%      under 100k       regional VP
     10% to 20%      100k and above   regional VP, then CRO
     above 20%       any              CRO and finance
   
   Plus these regardless of discount:
   
     Payment terms longer than 30 days    add finance
     Contract longer than 36 months       add finance
     Any custom clause                    add legal
   
   Every request carries which rule matched, so the rep can see why it went
   where it went.

3. 3

   Send the request where the approver works

   The difference between a decision today and a decision next week.

   Copy

   Send each approver one Slack message per request with: account, amount,
   discount requested, list price, term, payment terms, the rep's reason
   and a link to the deal.
   
   Buttons for Approve, Reject and Ask a question. Ask a question opens a
   thread with the rep and pauses the deadline until the rep answers.
   
   Write the decision, the approver and the time back to the quote in
   Salesforce the moment the button is pressed.

   Put the margin or the discount against list in the message itself. An approver who has to work it out will put it off.

4. 4

   Lock the quote and escalate on silence

   Two rules that decide whether anyone trusts the approval.

   Headless skills tray-gotchas

   Copy

   Use tray-gotchas, then build both rules.
   
   Lock: store the exact terms that were approved. If the discount, term,
   payment terms or amount on the quote change after approval, clear the
   approval and block sending until it is approved again. Tell the rep why.
   
   Escalate: every request gets a deadline from the rules table, for
   example four working hours for a manager and one working day for a VP.
   No answer by then and it goes to the next approver up, with the original
   approver and the rep both told.
   
   Never approve anything automatically because time ran out. Silence moves
   the request up, it never says yes.

5. 5

   Record every decision and measure the wait

   The step that turns approval time into a number someone can improve.

   Copy

   Land every request and decision in Snowflake: rule matched, approver,
   decision, time to decide, and whether the deal closed.
   
   Then report:
   
     Median time to decision per approver and per rule.
     Requests that escalated, and who they escalated from.
     Approved discount against closed-won rate, by band.
     Quotes blocked by the lock, which shows where terms change late.
   
   If one rule sends most requests to the CRO, the thresholds are wrong,
   and that is a rules table change, not a workflow change.

6. 6

   Prove it works, then hand the rules to the deal desk

   Because pricing policy changes faster than anyone plans for.

   Copy

   Run the per-step checks and the whole-workflow audit before this touches
   a live quote.
   
   Then open the same workflow in Tray Build so the deal desk can change
   thresholds, approvers and deadlines in the visual canvas without a
   ticket.

What it connects to

Approvals read the deal, reach the approver and hold the quote to the decision.

Named systems are the ones most teams run, not the only ones that work. Each is an authentication in your Tray workspace, referenced by name, so the workflow never holds a credential. Where we have a connector page, the name links to it.

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