Where should the first discount threshold sit?

High enough that most quotes never route. A self-serve band that catches more than about a third of your quotes turns the deal desk into a queue and teaches reps to route around it. Set the first threshold above your typical discount, not below it, and use the deeper rungs for the exceptions that deserve a second signature.

How many approval rungs should a policy have?

Three above self-serve is usually enough: a manager, a director, and Finance. Each extra rung adds latency to exactly the deals that are already under time pressure. If a rung would decide fewer than a couple of quotes a month, fold it into the one above it.

What is a discount ceiling and why can it not be overridden?

The ceiling is the discount past which no quote may be finalized by anyone. It is different from a threshold, which routes a quote to a person. A ceiling with an override is a threshold with extra steps — its value comes entirely from the fact that quarter-end pressure cannot move it. In Glime the server refuses to finalize past the ceiling with a 422.

Should a margin floor block a quote or flag it?

Flag it. A quote below the margin floor is sometimes the right commercial call — a strategic logo, a land-and-expand, a competitive displacement — and the policy should force that to be a decision somebody makes on the record rather than one the tool makes silently. The ceiling is the thing that blocks.

Discount policy builder — draft an approval ladder you can enforce

How to read the numbers

The self-serve share is the number that decides adoption

A policy that routes more than roughly a third of quotes will be worked around — reps pad the first offer to leave room, or they close at list and discount in the renewal. If the tool above puts your self-serve share under about 70%, the honest fix is usually to raise the first threshold rather than to add approvers. Governance you route around is worse than no governance, because it also costs you the record.

A rung that decides two quotes a month is not a rung

Look at the Regional Director line. If it is a handful of quotes a year, that rung is adding a day of latency to the deals under the most time pressure in exchange for almost no control. Fold it into the rung above and let the director's authority live in the Finance band instead.

The ceiling is the only line with no exception

Everything above it is a routing decision — who has to say yes. The ceiling is a different kind of statement: this deal does not happen at this price, in this quarter, for this reason. If your organisation cannot name a number it would refuse, the policy has thresholds but no floor under it, and that is the gap discount approval governance is meant to close.

Flag the margin floor, block the ceiling

A quote under the margin floor is sometimes correct — a strategic logo, a displacement, a land-and-expand. The policy's job is to make that an explicit decision with a name against it, not to prevent it. Glime computes blended margin server-side on every reprice, so the flag is on the number that will actually be stored.

Questions this raises

Can we adopt this policy without buying anything?

Yes, and you should test it that way first. Copy the text, put it where your reps already look, and run a quarter. What you will learn is the thing worth knowing before you buy any tool: how often the policy is followed when nothing enforces it. That number is the actual business case — for us or for anyone else.

What changes when a system enforces it instead?

Three things stop depending on goodwill. Steps cannot be taken out of order (the server returns 409), a rep cannot approve their own quote (403), and past the ceiling nothing finalizes at all (422). The fourth is quieter but matters more at audit time: every decision is written to a tenant-scoped log with the actor and timestamp, so the policy's history is a query rather than an archaeology project.

Our thresholds vary by product line and region. Does that fit?

Partly. Glime enforces one ladder per workspace today, with the margin floor doing the work that a product-specific threshold would otherwise do — a deep discount on a thin-margin line trips the floor even when it sits inside its band. If your policy genuinely needs a different ladder per region or per product family, that is a real gap in the product today and worth raising before a trial rather than during one.

Where did the default numbers come from?

They are Glime's shipped defaults — 10/20/35/50 with a 20% margin floor — chosen because they leave most B2B quotes self-serve while still putting a second name on anything past a fifth off list. They are a starting point, not a benchmark. Your category's normal discount is the input that should move them.

How discount approvals work in Glime — the ladder, the three refusals, and what Finance gets on the other side.
Glime by role — the same policy seen from RevOps, sales leadership, the deal desk, and Finance.
ROI calculator — what the current process costs, in a number you can forward to a CFO.
The live sandbox — submit a discounted quote and watch the chain decide it.

Discount policy builder

Set your thresholds

Where your quotes would go

Your policy, written down