Who must approve the final tender price?

Decision rights

Find the delegation before collecting signatures

Start with the legal entity making the offer. A group executive may have a wide management role but no documented authority for a subsidiary’s guarantee or a partner’s price. Identify the current delegation document, effective dates, reserved matters, value basis and any joint-signature requirements. For a consortium, establish which entity approves each commitment and who may bind the combined bid. Keep uncertain authority visible; do not repair it with an assumed hierarchy.

The Financial Reporting Council’s guidance, paragraphs 221 to 227, discusses clear delegation and accountability for risk management. It is guidance for companies applying the UK Corporate Governance Code, not a mandatory signatory list for every supplier. The practical question here is whether the organisation’s own rules allocate this decision. A CFO, owner-manager or commercial committee may hold the necessary power, but the article cannot assign it to them.

Read thresholds carefully. The delegation may use whole-term contract value rather than annual revenue, gross exposure rather than expected loss, or aggregate awards rather than one lot. Extensions, guarantees and uncapped obligations may trigger separate reserved matters. Do not split one commitment into smaller approvals to remain below a threshold. If the policy does not explain aggregation or currency conversion, ask the policy owner before choosing the convenient interpretation.

Technical review, risk acceptance, legal representation and permission to operate the submission channel are different responsibilities. A person can hold several of them, but record each basis. As a narrow US example, FAR 52.215-1(c)(2) addresses an authorized proposal signer and evidence for a signing agent when that provision applies. It does not identify the supplier’s internal margin approver. Check the actual solicitation, applicable version and agency deviations before drawing a legal conclusion.

Approval inputs

Give reviewers the commercial basis behind the total

An approval request should let a reviewer answer what the company will earn, spend and be obliged to do if the buyer accepts. Include the controlled price schedule, delivery scope, cost estimate, contract departures, payment model and current assumptions. Record source versions and review owners. Bring in completed specialist analyses instead of asking the final approver to reconstruct tax, indexation or partner commitments during the last hour.

Show base term, options, rates, quantities, discounts, taxes and currency treatment separately. The buyer’s evaluated price may use a hypothetical basket that will never be ordered. Label it as an evaluation figure and present the supplier’s revenue and cost scenarios beside it. Where the buyer may award individual lots, test the economically material award combinations. A discount supported by shared resources across two lots needs a permitted and approved treatment when only one is won.

Define the financial measure. Contribution as revenue less the stated cost base, expressed over revenue, differs from markup on cost. Identify overhead allocation, financing, contingencies and exclusions so two reviewers use the same denominator and perimeter. Keep peak cash need separate from contribution. The Cabinet Office’s June 2026 pricing guidance specifically calls for testing profitability and cash flow under different conditions; it addresses contracting authorities and does not set a supplier’s private approval limits.

The risk section must preserve expensive non-price terms. A longer warranty, revised acceptance condition or unapproved liability provision may matter even if the spreadsheet total is unchanged. State the specialist conclusion, remaining exposure and decision requested. A risk that lacks a dependable monetary estimate remains a qualitative exception with an owner. Setting its spreadsheet value to zero does not resolve it.

Worked price bridge

A passing margin can still leave the offer unapproved

The fictional supplier Calder has approval for a £600,000 offer with £480,000 of scoped delivery cost and allocated overhead. Contribution is £120,000, or twenty per cent of revenue. The example excludes taxes and financing charges; those require separate review. The illustrative routine approval floor is fifteen per cent, and the existing funding approval covers a £100,000 peak. None of these thresholds describes Zephior or an industry rule.

Before release, sales proposes a £12,000 discount and delivery identifies £18,000 of omitted transition work. Revenue becomes £588,000 and cost £498,000. Contribution falls to £90,000, or 15.31 per cent. The £30,000 reduction in contribution contains two distinct decisions: the price concession and the changed delivery estimate. Showing only the final percentage would hide why the old approval is no longer enough.

The updated dated cash forecast now reaches a £125,000 peak, leaving £25,000 beyond existing funding authority. That peak is a separate input from the cash schedule, not a number derivable from the contribution table. Calder must obtain approved, available funding or change the offer through a permitted route. The normal margin test passes, but the commercial release remains on hold.

A further £6,000 discount would produce £582,000 of revenue and £84,000 contribution: 14.43 per cent. At £498,000 cost, the minimum revenue for fifteen per cent contribution is £498,000 divided by 0.85, or approximately £585,882.35. From the current £588,000 price, the mathematical discount headroom is about £2,117.65. That calculation is not a delegation to use the headroom; the named approver must expressly authorize any bounded price movement.

Release conditions

Record what remains a prerequisite and what risk was accepted

Write conditions so another person can determine whether they are met. “Approved subject to finance being comfortable” has no observable endpoint. A usable condition names the funding amount and period, the authorized treasury decision, evidence of drawability and the person who may close the condition. Keep the offer on hold until that evidence exists. A promising email from a lender does not satisfy a requirement for a committed facility.

Distinguish prerequisites from residual risks. A director may be authorized to accept a documented lower-margin case. That acceptance cannot make a required buyer clarification arrive, create a missing partner agreement or waive an applicable law. If the bid can be released without an expected clarification, the decision must assess the terms as they currently stand. Do not describe a hoped-for post-award negotiation as an accepted mitigation.

Use explicit outcomes: approved for the specified version; approved within a defined envelope; conditional and held; rejected; or authority unresolved. Record the person, capacity, delegation reference, decision time, accepted exceptions and expiry. An approver’s attendance at a meeting, read receipt or silence is insufficient evidence of a decision. An electronic approval can be useful when company policy permits it and the identity, content and timing are retained.

Preserve dissent and its resolution. A commercial approver who has power to accept a risk should see the specialist’s contrary analysis, not just a green summary. Where duties overlap in a small business, document who prepared the price and who challenged it, using proportionate independent review where available. An unavailable approver is an authority gap unless an effective substitute delegation covers this transaction; deadline pressure does not create one.

Version control

Check what the buyer will receive against what was approved

Tie the decision to controlled commercial files and the operative text in the offer. Include portal amounts, pricing workbook, discounts, options and the relevant contract response. An internal memorandum that assumes an exclusion does not protect the supplier if the submitted response promises the excluded work. Use the commercial-assumptions review to establish which conditions must be disclosed, where disclosure is allowed and whether they change responsiveness.

A fingerprint can establish that a file’s bytes match an approved copy. It cannot prove that the figures are correct or that its author had authority. Keep a readable identification of the offer alongside file identifiers, revision and the reviewer’s comparison. The broader release manifest, signatures and submission receipt belong to final submission control; this article supplies the approved commercial basis that those controls must preserve.

Route changes by effect. A price reduction reopens concession and margin authority; a payment change reopens funding; a supplier substitution reopens cost, delivery and contract conclusions. Even an unchanged total may conceal a different rate distribution, currency exposure or award assumption. A purely presentational edit needs a documented equivalence check under the organisation’s rules. It does not justify carrying forward approval without checking whether any meaning or amount changed.

An approved envelope must state its floor or ceiling, covered lots, unchanged cost and scope, permitted movement, validity and who may exercise it. Calculate limits at full precision and round permitted discounts down to the payable currency unit so rounding cannot breach a floor. In Calder’s case a price floor alone would not resolve the funding gap. Once an input moves outside the envelope, stop the commercial release and obtain a new decision. Supersede the old approval visibly so a stale attachment cannot be mistaken for current permission.

Controlled handover

Release the approved offer without exposing the approval limits

The handover should tell the release owner exactly which commercial position is approved, which conditions have been closed, when approval expires and what must be returned for review. Keep internal margin floors, negotiations and sensitive cost evidence in authorized storage. Supply buyer-required cost disclosures through their prescribed channel; confidentiality is not a reason to omit a mandatory disclosure, and an internal approval record is not automatically a buyer attachment.

Check every outward commercial location one last time. A corrected workbook and an old portal total are two different offers to the reader. Resolve the discrepancy before the authorized release action. If the mismatch is found after transmission, preserve the sent version and involve the responsible commercial and legal owners promptly. Follow the actual correction or withdrawal route; replacing a local file does not amend a submitted tender.

Completion means the price approval record has a definite outcome and an inspectable link to the intended commercial offer. If authority, funding or a material prerequisite is missing, the useful result is a dated hold with a named owner and the evidence needed to resolve it. Once approved, pass it to submission control. A commercial sign-off is one required input to that later decision, not proof that the buyer has received or accepted the bid.