Auto-accept quotes

Read time: 5 minutes. Who it's for: Merchants who want low-risk, in-policy quote requests to close themselves - without giving up control of the deals that matter.

Auto-accept is the most hands-off automation action QuotWay offers: when a matching request arrives, it builds the proposal at the buyer's requested price and finalizes a full acceptance on their behalf, immediately. Because it commits a deal without a human in the loop, it ships with built-in safety conditions. This article covers the action and those guardrails in detail - for the full When → If → Then model, see Automation rules.

⚠️ Automation, including auto-accept, requires the Professional plan or higher.

What does auto-accept do?

Auto-accept is one of the Then actions on an automation rule. When a quote request matches the rule's trigger and conditions, QuotWay:

Creates a proposal at the buyer's requested price (the price the buyer asked for on the request).
Finalizes a full acceptance on the buyer's behalf, moving the quote to FULLY_ACCEPTED.
Runs your usual downstream settings (such as draft-order and invoice handling) just as if the buyer had accepted manually.

It's the instant-close action - useful for predictable, low-value, in-policy requests where you'd always say yes anyway.

Before you set it up

You're on the Professional or Enterprise plan.
You understand the action commits a deal automatically. Treat your conditions and safety cap as the line between "auto-close this" and "a human should look."
You've decided which requests are safe to auto-accept - usually narrow ones: a specific product set, a customer tag, and a value ceiling.

The safety conditions

Auto-accept is deliberately conservative. Three guardrails keep humans in control, and they apply on top of any conditions you set on the rule.

A safety cap

Every auto-accept rule has a safety cap - a total above which the rule never fires. If a request totals more than the cap, auto-accept skips it and the quote waits for a person. Set the cap to the largest deal you're comfortable closing without review. There's no way to auto-accept above your own cap.

Unpriced and custom lines are skipped

If a request contains a line with no price - for example, a custom line a buyer added without a price, or anything QuotWay can't price automatically - the rule skips that quote for human review rather than guessing a number. Auto-accept only closes quotes it can price cleanly end to end, so it never commits to a line whose price isn't established.

Approval policies always take precedence

If a matching merchant- or buyer-side approval workflow applies to the quote, that workflow wins. Auto-accept does not bypass approvals: the quote follows the approval chain exactly as a manual proposal would, and won't be auto-finalized while sign-off is pending. The quote shows AWAITING_BUYER_APPROVAL until the chain clears. See Approval workflows.

How to set up an auto-accept rule

Open Automation in the app navigation and create a rule (or start from a template).
When - set the trigger to a quote being submitted. (Quotes you create yourself are never auto-actioned.)
If - add conditions that scope the rule tightly: products, customer tags, value, currency, and so on. The narrower, the safer.
Then - choose Accept the quote automatically and set the safety cap.
Save and enable the rule.

What gets logged?

Every firing is recorded, including skips and the reason for them. On the Automation page's Recent activity and on the quote's timeline you'll see entries such as:

over-cap - the total exceeded the safety cap, so the quote waited for a human.
unpriced-lines - a custom or otherwise unpriced line meant the quote was skipped for review.
status-moved - a person acted on the quote before the rule could.

If a rule doesn't fire when you expected, check Recent activity first - the skip reason usually explains it.

Things to keep in mind

One shot per quote. A rule never fires twice on the same quote, even across retries.
Requested price only. Auto-accept closes at the buyer's requested price; it isn't a discount engine. If you want pricing logic before a human-free close, keep auto-accept scoped to requests you'd accept as-is.
Pause anytime. Use the master switch on the Automation page, or the rule's own switch, to pause auto-accept without deleting it.
Customer-tag conditions match logged-in buyers only - guests have no tags.

Automation rules - the full When → If → Then model and the other automation actions.
Approval workflows - the sign-off chains that always take precedence over auto-accept.
Convert a quote to a draft order - what happens after a quote reaches FULLY_ACCEPTED.