Welcome to our order and quote exception approval series brought to you by Nue! We’ve tapped into decades of experience to bring you approval best practices we see across sales-led B2B organizations.
Approvals may not sound glamorous, but they generate more questions—and complaints—than almost any other topic when we host webinars or conferences on the quote-to-cash process.
If you’re here, you get it.
Sales is a pressure cooker, especially in the U.S., where missing quota can mean losing your job. So when reps push boundaries to save a deal, can you really blame them?
Sometimes, even sales leadership lets “just this once” contract terms slide—especially when the quarter’s looking grim.
That’s why exception approvals matter.
Done right, they scale your business, reduce internal back-and-forth, and prevent risky behavior before it becomes a legal or financial mess. Revenue operators, your work may be invisible—but it keeps the lights on (literally).
Buyers will negotiate almost anything in a contract—based on past experiences, internal politics, or just to feel like they “won.” Exceptions typically fall into four categories:
Price is the weapon of choice in competitive deals. As quarters slip, discounts balloon. But every discount eats into margin—and eventually, into viability.
A savvy CFO models the true cost of each product and sets boundaries for acceptable discounts. These models also inform:
RevOps should work closely with Finance to define approval thresholds and understand the “why” behind them. That knowledge pays dividends later.
Contract exceptions range from the trivial redlines by an overzealous corporate lawyer (Do they get paid by the word? Sometimes we wonder!) to major amendments due to cutting corners or straying from industry standard terms. The major red flags to watch for are requests to amend or add data privacy clauses, data processing terminology, or any type of liability or indemnification change.
Startups often cut corners by using DIY contracts—don’t let that become a liability. And if you’re seeing the same term flagged repeatedly, it’s time for legal and leadership to reassess the standard.
There are more common exceptions that are a standard part of doing business. Some businesses insist on different payment terms. The most ideal time period for your company’s revenue recognition is typically 15 to 30 day payment terms. Some businesses will ask for 60 or 90 day payment terms. If these are large organizations, this may be due to a clunky procurement process. If they are a small organization, it may hint at a cash flow problem.
Unfortunately, all of these changes impact your company’s revenue recognition process (and possibly flag a future collections issue in that last case).
The other common clause SaaS CEOs love to sneak in their contracts are evergreen renewals, which are frequently redlined and should be accounted for in your product and contract automation processes.
These pop up when customers want to change how they’re billed—not necessarily how much they pay. Common asks:
Revenue recognition gets tricky here, especially across borders.
Resellers, third party partners, and channel deals may also introduce interesting revenue share considerations, which your CFO will need to help your team navigate through a regular payment structure or revenue share with your partner or some other type of rewards program.
While we see some operational or timing requests as very logical ways of accounting for a delay or disruption in service, some requests are red flags that your customer is struggling with cash flow.
🚩 Backdating start dates: Often used to retroactively charge for a trial or tie a purchase to a prior budget period.
🚩 Delayed first invoice: Okay if onboarding is delayed; risky if it’s just a stalling tactic.
🚩 Proof of concept clauses: These often morph into vague, never-ending targets that stall revenue.
Approach with caution—and document everything.
These approvals usually follow pain. A few bad deals in a non-ICP segment can trigger automation to flag risky industries or use cases.
For example: If cyber security companies keep defaulting due to compliance issues, the CFO might want approvals for any future deals in that vertical.
Ideally, these are caught before the contract stage. If managers aren’t flagging questionable opps in forecasting or coaching, they need… coaching.
Every approver you add creates drag.
For RevOps, approvals become an all-hands-on-deck scramble at quarter-end. If deal desk isn’t your full-time job, expect your other projects to stall.
Now imagine the legal counsel, CFO, or VP you ping on Slack, email, and text. They’re being asked to drop everything, accept risk, and do it fast.
Context switching kills productivity. Delays kill deals. Approval fatigue is real.
Not every deal needs to go through the same level of scrutiny. If your $5K startup deal gets the same legal review as your $500K enterprise contract, something’s broken.
Instead of creating a one-size-fits-all gauntlet, build tiered approval paths based on:
The best approval systems scale with risk, not just process for process’s sake. And if you can automate 80% of routing based on logic and data? Even better.
Pro tip: build in automatic approvals where you can. If a request meets all the conditions and no red flags are triggered, don’t make someone manually rubber-stamp it.
If Sales is the gas pedal, RevOps is the steering wheel.
You’re not just here to enforce guardrails—you’re here to design the road. That means:
It also means making the pain visible. Track approval volume, velocity, and common blockers. If 80% of deals get stuck at the same clause or the same stakeholder is the bottleneck every time, you've got data to justify change.
RevOps should own the tooling, too—whether it's CPQ, CLM, or homegrown workflows. You’re the connective tissue between systems and strategy.
Bottom line: your job isn’t to say “no.” It’s to make sure the business can say “yes” to the right deals—faster, smarter, and with confidence.
Quote exceptions are a fact of life. Approvals give you the leverage to control them—if your process isn’t a bureaucratic mess.
And remember: the best approval process is one nobody notices—because it works.
Looking for a better way to manage approvals? Nue just dropped a brand new addition that will knock your socks off. Check it out here and tell them we sent you.
