Separate commercial approval from financial validation
Two decisions with different owners, evidence and SLAs should not share one approval step—even when one form collects the data for both.
Independently created. Contains no employer or client implementation detail, internal names or figures.
01Context
A commercial organization routes every new customer through a single ‘customer approval’. Sales managers approve terms they can judge—and tax data and credit exposure they cannot. Finance re-checks everything later, so the step neither protects Finance nor speeds up Sales.
02Decision drivers
- D01
One accountable owner per decision
- D02
Approvers see only evidence they can judge
- D03
Rejections return to the stage that can fix them
- D04
SLAs measurable per decision
03Options considered
One combined approval
Small organizations where one role genuinely owns both decisions
Cost: Approvers sign for evidence outside their competenceSequential, separate decisions
Terms must be settled before credit can be sized
Cost: Longer path unless each SLA has an ownerParallel decisions, joint gate
High volume where terms rarely change after validation
Cost: Rework when credit review changes the terms04Decision
Model commercial approval and financial validation as two decisions with separate owners, evidence, SLAs and return states. Commercial approval decides whether to commit on these terms; financial validation decides whether this legal entity can transact. A credit outcome that changes the terms returns to commercial approval—not to the start.
05Consequences
- Sales managers stop approving tax and credit data they cannot assess.
- Each rejection carries a reason code and returns to the stage that can fix it.
- Approval ageing and first-pass validation become separately measurable and separately owned.
- CRM shows two distinct states instead of one ambiguous ‘pending approval’.
06Revisit when
One role becomes accountable for both commercial and credit risk.
Credit exposure is pre-approved by segment, making validation deterministic.
07Where this decision is applied
Cases that take this decision, and why it matters there.
- Architecture case / 002Designing a global lead-to-customer operating modelA process-first case for a fictional global B2B company: stages, decision rights, approvals, exceptions and measurement—designed before any system is configured.
- Process case / 02Designing a quote-to-order process with clear ownershipBinding approvals to quote versions, moving ERP validation forward and giving rejected orders an owner.
- Automation case / 05Designing approval automation as a state machineTwo decisions—commercial approval and financial validation—modelled as one state machine with explicit rejection, return and re-entry, invalidation rules for changed data, timeouts that escalate and a complete history.