How to Allow Your Customers to Approve Quotes Online

Requesting customer approval sends your customer a secure link to the rental quote PDF so they can review it and approve it online, with their name, the date and time and their purchase order number all recorded against the quote.

Overview

Chasing a signed quote back over email is slow, and a reply saying "yep, go ahead" is not much of an audit trail. A customer approval request turns that conversation into a record: Latner emails a one-off link, the customer reads the quote in their browser, types their name and clicks Approve, and the quote moves forward on its own.

The customer needs no login and no Latner account - just the link in the email.
Latner attaches the rental quote PDF to the email and shows the same PDF on the approval page.
Every request is tracked on the quote's Approval Requests tab, from Unopened through Opened to Approved.
Approving records the approver's name, their IP address, the date and time, and the purchase order number they supplied.
An approved quote moves to Customer Approved, and can convert itself straight into a rental contract.
You can send as many approval requests as you like against the one quote - each is a separate record.

Before You Begin

Check the following before you send your first request.

Requirement	Where to Find It
Email Rental Quote permission	Security › Configuration › Permission Groups › Rental › Option. The same permission covers Email Rental Quote and Request Customer Approval.
Rental Quotes permission	Security › Configuration › Permission Groups › Rental › Screen. Needed to open the quote and read its Approval Requests tab.
SendGrid Email API Key	Security › Settings › Email. Latner cannot send the approval email without it. SendGrid Sender Email sets the From address; leave it blank and the email comes from no-reply@latner.app.
Rental Quote Purchase Order Required (optional)	Security › Settings › Rental. Turn it on to force the customer to enter a purchase order number before they can approve.
Auto Convert Customer Approved Rental Quotes (optional)	Security › Settings › Rental. Turn it on to have Latner create the rental contract as soon as the customer approves.
A quote with detail lines	The quote needs at least one line, and cannot already be Won, Customer Approved, Cancelled or Lost.

The two Rental settings that shape the customer's experience. Purchase Order Required decides whether the customer must supply a PO, and Auto Convert decides whether the approved quote becomes a rental contract on its own

Rental Quote Purchase Order Required is read at the moment you send the request and stored on that request. Turning the setting on later does not make an already-sent link start asking for a purchase order, and turning it off does not relax a link that was sent while it was on.

Sending the Approval Request

Step 1 - Open the quote and choose Request Customer Approval

Go to Rental › Rental Quote, open the quote, then choose Options › Request Customer Approval.

The option is greyed out when the quote has no detail lines, or when it is already Won, Customer Approved, Cancelled or Lost. There is nothing left to approve in those states.

The Options menu on an Open rental quote. Request Customer Approval sits directly below Email Rental Quote and uses the same permission

Step 2 - Fill in the email

Latner pre-fills most of the email from the quote and your branch's email settings. Check the recipient and the message, then click Submit.

To - required. Defaults to the quote's delivery email. Start typing to pick from the customer's contacts.
Cc - optional. Customer contacts and Latner users both appear here.
From Name - required. Defaults to your name.
From Email - read only. This is the branch's SendGrid Sender Email, or no-reply@latner.app when none is set.
Reply To Email - required. Where the customer's replies land.
Rental Quote PDF - optional. Pick an already-generated PDF, or leave it blank and Latner generates a fresh one for you.
Subject and Message - both required, both pre-filled from your branch's rental quote email settings and your email signature.
Additional Attachments - optional extra files, on top of the quote PDF.

The Request Customer Approval dialog, already populated. Leaving Rental Quote PDF blank tells Latner to generate the PDF as part of sending

On submit, Latner creates the approval request, generates the PDF if you left the field blank, and emails the customer a message headed Action Required: Please Review Your Document with a Review Document button and the quote PDF attached. If the quote was still Open, sending also moves the quote and its detail lines to Quoted, stamps the sent date and sets the quote's expiry date to 30 days from today.

Step 3 - Track the request on the quote

Open the Approval Requests tab on the quote. Each request appears with its own link and a status that tells you exactly how far the customer has got.

Unopened - the email has gone out but nobody has clicked the link yet.
Opened - the customer has opened the link. Last Opened Datetime updates every time they come back.
Approved - the customer has approved the quote.

A freshly sent request sitting at Unopened. The Approval Request column is the exact link the customer received, so you can resend it or open it yourself to check what they see

What the Customer Does

Step 4 - The customer opens the link

Clicking Review Document in the email opens the approval page in the customer's browser. No login is required. The quote PDF is rendered on the page, with a Download PDF to review link for anyone whose browser will not display it inline, and a Reference number at the bottom they can quote back to you.

Simply opening the page moves the request from Unopened to Opened in Latner, which is a useful signal on its own when you are chasing a quote.

The customer's view of the approval page. The approval form sits above the document so it is visible before they scroll through the quote

Step 5 - The customer approves

The customer enters their details and clicks Approve.

Full Name - always required. This is what gets recorded as the approver.
Purchase Order - always shown, but only mandatory when Rental Quote Purchase Order Required was on at the time you sent the request. Anything the customer enters here is copied onto the quote.

The approval form completed. Latner also captures the approver's IP address and the exact date and time behind the scenes

Step 6 - The customer sees the confirmation

The page confirms This document has been approved and keeps showing the quote so the customer has a record. Latner emails everyone on the original request a confirmation headed The Quote was Approved, again with the quote PDF attached. If the customer returns to the link later, they land straight back on this page.

The confirmation page. The Reference number is the approval request id, which is also the first column on the quote's Approval Requests tab

After Approval

The approval request moves to Approved and records Approver Name, PO Number Provided and Approved Datetime.
A quote sitting at Quoted moves to Customer Approved, and the purchase order number the customer typed is written onto the quote.
With Auto Convert Customer Approved Rental Quotes on, Latner immediately converts the quote into a rental contract. The new contract inherits the purchase order number, and the quote's Rental Contract Details panel links straight to it. Because the customer is not a Latner user, the conversion is recorded against your system administrator rather than the sales rep.
With the setting off, the quote waits at Customer Approved for someone to run Options › Convert › Convert to New Contract (or Convert to Existing Contract to add it to a contract that already exists). The Convert option only appears once the quote has left Open and Quoted, which reaching Customer Approved does for you.
If the conversion fails - a credit hold, an inactive customer, a missing purchase order - the quote stays at Customer Approved and a warning icon appears in the Convert Error Message column of the Approval Requests tab. Hover it to read what went wrong, fix it, then convert manually.

The approved request on the quote, with the approver's name, their purchase order and the approval timestamp all captured

The same quote once auto conversion has run - Converted, carrying PO-4471, and linked to the new rental contract

An approval cannot be undone, and a link cannot be recalled once the email has left. There is no cancel action on an approval request, so a link you have sent stays usable until the customer approves it. If the quote changes after you have sent a request, revise the quote and send a fresh approval request rather than relying on the customer to ignore the old link.

FAQs

Request Customer Approval is greyed out on my quote. Why?

Either the quote has no detail lines yet, or its status is Won, Customer Approved, Cancelled or Lost. Add the lines, or - if the quote has already been won or approved - convert it instead. Note that the option is hidden entirely, rather than greyed out, if you do not hold the Email Rental Quote permission.

The customer approved, but the quote is not showing as Customer Approved. What happened?

Latner only moves the quote to Customer Approved when it is still sitting at Quoted at the moment the customer approves. If the quote was revised, cancelled, marked won or converted in the meantime, the approval is still recorded in full on the Approval Requests tab, but the quote's own status is left alone.

Does the approval link expire?

No. Latner does not put an expiry on the link, so it stays valid until the customer approves it. This is separate from the quote's own Expiry Date, which is set to 30 days out when the quote is first sent - an expired quote does not close off the approval link. If a link is ever expired or cancelled, the customer sees a page reading Approval Request Expired or Cancelled. with a Try Again option.

Can I send the request to more than one person, or send it again?

Yes to both. Add as many addresses as you need in To and Cc - any of them can approve, and the first approval wins. Running Request Customer Approval again creates a brand new request with its own link, and both requests stay listed on the tab.

Do I need to generate the PDF before I send the request?

No. Leave Rental Quote PDF blank and Latner generates one as part of sending. Generate it first with Options › Generate Rental Quote PDF only when you want to check the document, or to send a specific earlier version - every generated PDF stays available on the Rental Quote PDF History tab.

How do I make the purchase order number compulsory?

Turn on Rental Quote Purchase Order Required under Security › Settings › Rental before you send the request. The customer then cannot approve without entering one. The same setting also stops anyone converting a quote to a rental contract until the quote carries a purchase order number, which is why an approval that supplies one keeps the whole chain moving.

What proof do we hold that the customer approved?

Against the approval request Latner stores the name the approver typed, the IP address the approval came from, the date and time it happened, the purchase order number supplied, and the exact PDF that was on screen. The Approval Requests tab shows all of it, and the customer keeps a copy through the confirmation email.

The customer says they never received the email. What should I check?

Look at the Sent Emails tab on the quote - a failed send is listed there with the reason. The usual cause is a missing SendGrid Email API Key under Security › Settings › Email. In the meantime the approval request itself already exists, so you can copy its link from the Approval Request column on the Approval Requests tab and send it to the customer yourself.

Watch the Demo

Prefer to watch it? Step through the same flow here.