Opportunity Approval Workflow

Overview

In Salesforce, salespeople are permitted to create new opportunities but those opportunities require manager review and approval before becoming active in the pipeline. This approval gate maintains data quality, prevents unauthorized or premature opportunity creation, and ensures that all active opportunities meet a consistent standard.

This pattern emerged at ^[1] as a solution to a related problem: salespeople were incorrectly creating new leads for existing contacts instead of new opportunities, causing data duplication. Introducing an approval flow for opportunities addresses both the duplication issue and the broader need for oversight without blocking salespeople from capturing new work.

How It Works

1. A salesperson identifies a new potential project with an existing contact and creates a new opportunity record in Salesforce.
2. The opportunity is saved in an unapproved state — it exists in the system but is flagged as pending review and does not affect forecasts or active pipeline views.
3. The opportunity is automatically routed to the designated approver (e.g., the sales manager or principal) for review.
4. The approver reviews the record and either approves it (making it active) or rejects it with feedback.
5. Only approved opportunities enter the active pipeline and contribute to forecasting.

Why This Matters

Without an approval gate, salespeople can create opportunities freely, which leads to:

• Data pollution — duplicate, incomplete, or premature records cluttering the pipeline
• Forecast distortion — unvetted opportunities skewing probability and revenue projections
• Loss of oversight — managers unaware of what is being actively pursued

The approval flow preserves salesperson autonomy (they can capture new work immediately) while giving leadership a quality-control checkpoint before records become authoritative.

Relationship to Lead vs. Opportunity Logic

This workflow is closely tied to the correct understanding of Salesforce's lead/opportunity distinction:

• Leads are for new contacts only — someone the organization has never worked with before.
• Opportunities are for existing contacts with new projects.

See ^[2] for the full decision flow. The approval workflow specifically governs the opportunity side of this boundary: once a salesperson correctly identifies that a new project should be an opportunity (not a lead), the approval flow ensures that opportunity is reviewed before it becomes active.

Note: Salespeople at Quarra Stone are also restricted from converting leads to opportunities themselves — that permission remains turned off to prevent premature conversions. The approval flow is a complementary control on the opportunity object itself.

Implementation Notes

• Salesforce supports approval processes natively on the opportunity object via Process Builder or Flow.
• The approval flow should be configured to:
• Trigger on opportunity creation (or on a status field change, e.g., "Submitted for Approval")
• Route to the designated approver
• Lock the record from editing while approval is pending
• Send an email or in-app notification to the approver
• Required fields (e.g., Project Name, Close Date, Stage) should be enforced before submission so the approver receives complete records.

Client Context

This workflow was designed and agreed upon during a Salesforce review call with ^[1] on 2025-10-31. Lincoln Durham (Quarra Stone) identified the need for oversight after recognizing that the sales team had been misusing the lead object. Mark Hope (Asymmetric) proposed the approval flow as the mechanism to maintain data quality without removing salesperson access to create opportunities.

Assigned implementation: Mark Hope

Related Articles

• ^[2]
• ^[3]
• ^[4]
• ^[1]