The Quote Lifecycle in EDGEBIC: Draft to Converted

A quote in EDGEBIC travels through a clear lifecycle, from Draft when it is created to Converted when it becomes a manufacturing order, and only that final step is locked. In EDGEBIC by User Solutions, the statuses in between (Submitted, Under Review, Approved, Rejected, and Expired) are yours to move freely, so the record follows the real customer conversation instead of forcing a rigid path. Understanding the lifecycle keeps your quote pipeline honest: you know which quotes are live, which are closed, and which have crossed the one bridge that cannot be recrossed.

The seven statuses

A quote carries a status from creation to close. The values, in the order a typical quote passes through them:

Draft is where every quote starts. Submitted, Under Review, Approved, and Rejected track the back-and-forth with the customer. Expired flags a quote that outlived its validity. Converted is the one status a planner never sets by hand.

Freedom between the statuses, a lock at the end

EDGEBIC does not impose a strict state machine on the first six statuses. A planner can move a quote from Draft straight to Approved when a customer says yes on the phone, or bounce it back from Under Review to Draft to fix a quantity. The status is informational, meant to describe what is actually happening, not to gate the workflow behind a fixed sequence.

The exception is Converted. That status is set only by the conversion action, and once set, nothing moves the quote out of it. The lock exists for a concrete reason: a converted quote has already produced a real manufacturing order, and letting it revert would invite a second order for work already committed. Conversion is guarded so a quote produces exactly one order, ever.

Draft: the working state

A new quote lands in Draft. This is where you set the product, quantity, target date, scheduling direction, markup, and expiry, and where you run the first simulation. A Draft quote is a work in progress, and nothing about it is committed. You can simulate it repeatedly, adjust the price, build scenarios to test alternatives, and leave it sitting until the customer engages. A scenario that has served its purpose can be removed on its own, as deleting a quote scenario you no longer need sets out. The simulation itself never touches the production schedule, so a shop can carry dozens of Draft quotes without any effect on the floor.

Submitted, Under Review, and Approved: the conversation

Once a quote goes to the customer, its status tracks the negotiation. Submitted says it has been sent. Under Review says someone is deciding. Approved says the customer committed.

Approved is the meaningful checkpoint before conversion. It signals that the quote's price and date are agreed, and it is the natural moment to make sure the quote is ready to become an order. Two things matter here. First, the quote should have been simulated, so the dates and costs it will hand the order are capacity-aware rather than a routing estimate. Second, if any scenario was sold (a second shift, an outside vendor step), the real change behind that scenario should be made before conversion, because applying a scenario updates the quote's numbers but not the real routing or capacity. Approved is permission to convert; a fresh, honest simulation is what makes the resulting order's promise real.

Rejected and Expired: two kinds of closed

Not every quote wins, and the lifecycle distinguishes two ways a quote closes without converting.

Rejected is a customer no. It is a signal worth keeping, because a pattern of rejections on price or lead time tells you something about where your quotes are landing against the market.

Expired is a timeout. Every quote carries an expiry date, defaulting to 30 days out, and a quote past that window is stale by definition, because the capacity and rates its simulation was built on have moved. Expired is not a hard wall. It is a prompt to re-simulate before reviving the quote, so you never send a customer a date built on last month's floor. The full mechanics are in quote expiry dates.

Converted: the bridge to production

Converting an approved quote creates a manufacturing order and flips the quote to Converted in one action. The order carries the product and quantity, the target date as its due date, the simulated window, the scheduling direction, the estimated cost with its labor and material split, the markup and unit price, and the customer and sales-order links. Nothing is re-keyed, and the order is named after the quote so the lineage is obvious.

The order is created but not yet scheduled; it lands on the calendar at the next scheduling run, planned around everything already committed. And because conversion is guarded three ways (the Converted-status check, a link check against existing orders, and a job-number collision check), the same quote can never produce a second order. Repeat business gets a fresh quote. The full conversion mechanics are in how a quote becomes an order.

Working the lifecycle as a pipeline

The practical value of the statuses is that they turn a pile of quotes into a worklist. Draft and Submitted are live and may need a simulation refresh. Under Review and Approved deserve follow-up. Rejected and Expired are closed, one to learn from and one to potentially revive. Converted quotes have moved on to become orders. Sorting the quote grid by status shows you the pipeline at a glance, and the status, customer, and sales order filters narrow a long list to the handful you are chasing, and because the first six statuses move freely, the grid describes reality rather than a workflow nobody follows.

The takeaway

The quote lifecycle in EDGEBIC is a light framework, not a straitjacket. Six statuses (Draft, Submitted, Under Review, Approved, Rejected, and Expired) move freely so the record tracks the real customer conversation, and one status (Converted) locks so a quote produces exactly one order. Read the statuses as a pipeline, refresh a simulation before converting an aging quote, and the lifecycle keeps your quoting honest from first draft to shipped order. See the full path in the EDGEBIC quoting guide, how conversion works in how a quote becomes an order, and the platform in full on the EDGEBIC overview.