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Independent IFS Cloud practice · Sales
The sales quote that expired while everyone assumed it was still live
A sales quotation in IFS Cloud carries a validity date. A customer asks for a price, you send it, and then the deal goes quiet. The validity date passes, the quote lapses, and the opportunity is now dead on a technicality nobody watched. The pipeline may still show it as open. The revenue was never lost to a competitor; it was lost to a date, and no one recorded it as lost at all.
Key takeaways
- A sales quotation in IFS Cloud has a validity period; once it passes, the quoted prices and terms no longer stand. Whether anything pushes that fact to the person who owns the deal is worth checking in your setup.
- An expiring quote is a revenue problem, not a supply problem: unlike an order with no coverage, there is no order yet at all, just a window closing on the chance to win one.
- A pipeline full of quietly expired quotes overstates itself, so forecasting is built on opportunities that already lapsed.
- IFS Cloud stores each quotation’s validity date and status, so an expiry is knowable days before it happens, not weeks after.
- A read-only monitor can list quotes approaching expiry with no order raised, ranked by value, so a follow-up happens while the price still stands.
A sales exception with a visible cost gets chased. A held order gets attention because a shipment is stuck. A late delivery gets attention because a customer calls. An expiring quote is the opposite: nothing is stuck, nobody calls, and the only thing happening is a date getting closer on a record most people stopped looking at the day after they sent it. It is a quiet way to lose winnable business, because the loss leaves no mark. There is no rejection, no complaint, no failed delivery. There is just a quote that aged out.
1.How does a sales quotation lapse without anyone noticing?
A customer quotation in IFS Cloud is built to be time-bound. It carries a validity date, because the prices, discounts, and lead times inside it were true when quoted and may not be true forever. While the quote is valid, it can be converted straight into a sales order on the terms it names. That is the whole purpose of the object, and it is why a quote feels like progress the moment it is sent.
The validity date does its work silently. When it passes, the quote stops being convertible on its original terms, and nothing on the quote itself chases the salesperson. Whether its status still reads as open or in progress depends on your setup; where it does, a pipeline view shows a live opportunity long after the price it quoted has expired. The deal did not die because the customer said no. It died because a date passed and the record stayed exactly where it was.
2.What an expired quote actually costs
The cost is not the quote. It is the order that never got raised, plus the false confidence a stale pipeline gives the people planning around it.
- Lost order - a customer who was ready to buy at the quoted price is left to drift, re-quote elsewhere, or simply forget.
- Inflated forecast - quotes that have lapsed still sit in the pipeline, so the forecast counts opportunities that are already gone.
- Rework to re-quote - reopening an expired deal can mean re-pricing against today’s costs, which may no longer be competitive.
- Late discovery - found at a pipeline review weeks later, the window to act on the original price is already closed.
A quote in the pipeline is not the same as a quote you can still win. Validity is what separates the two, and validity is exactly what the pipeline view hides.
Illustrative only: a team sending a steady flow of quotations will always have some share sitting inside a 7–30 day window before their validity ends. Which of those turn into orders and which lapse depends partly on whether anyone followed up before the date.
3.Seeing expiry coming in IFS Cloud
The data is already in IFS Cloud. Every open quotation carries a validity date, a status, a customer, and a value, all readable through standard OData projections without touching the record. Turning that into a follow-up list is a daily read of two things:
- Quotes approaching expiry with no order raised - any open quotation whose validity date falls within your chosen window, ranked by value so the deals worth saving surface first.
- Quotes already lapsed but still open - a quotation past its validity date that still sits in an open status is either a follow-up to reopen deliberately or a record to close, but not a live forecast line.
The quotation record holds the answer already. It just needs something to read the date on a schedule and turn it into a task before the window closes.
4.The manual check versus a systematic one
Diligent salespeople track their own quotes, including the big deals. But memory is uneven, it favours the deals already front of mind, and it fails exactly when someone is busy, on leave, or has left. A scheduled monitor does not.
| Manual tracking | Systematic monitor | |
|---|---|---|
| Trigger | A salesperson remembers a specific quote | Every open quote checked against its date each day |
| What surfaces | The deals already front of mind | Every quote nearing expiry, ranked by value |
| Coverage | Skews to large, familiar accounts | All quotes, all reps, including the quiet ones |
| Continuity | Breaks when a rep is away or leaves | Runs regardless of who is at the desk |
| IFS footprint | None, but nothing watches the dates | Read-only; no object added to IFS Cloud |
Because it is a read-only monitoring pattern, it never writes back to IFS Cloud and adds no object inside the client system, so an R1 or R2 release leaves nothing of ours in your IFS to retest. Before each release I check that the standard projections it reads still match, as part of the subscription. It surfaces the quotes that need a decision and leaves the follow-up, the re-quote, or the close with the person who owns the deal.
5.Rolling it out without adding noise
- Start with value - the highest-value open quotes first, not every quotation on the book.
- Dry-run a full window - log what would have been flagged before a single reminder goes out.
- Two thresholds - an early follow-up window and a hard flag for quotes already past validity but still open.
- No upgrade footprint - standard OData reads only, nothing written back and nothing installed in IFS Cloud.
Related reading
6.Frequently asked questions
Does anything alert a salesperson when a quotation is about to expire?
That depends on your setup, so check it in your own data. The validity date is stored on the quotation, but reaching it is a valid outcome, so nothing may be pushed to the owner. The quote can keep an open status, which is why it can look live on a pipeline view long after the quoted terms have lapsed.
How is an expiring quote different from a sales order without coverage?
An order without coverage is a commitment already made that cannot be supplied. An expiring quote is the stage before any order exists: a price offered whose window is closing. One is a supply problem on a real order; the other is a revenue problem on an opportunity that has not yet been won.
What data does IFS Cloud need to expose to flag expiring quotes?
Only the quotation validity date, its status, the customer, and the value, all available through standard OData projections. Reading those on a schedule is enough to list every open quote nearing expiry with no order raised, ranked so the most valuable deals get a follow-up first.
Does monitoring quotation expiry write anything back to IFS Cloud?
No. The pattern reads quotation dates and statuses through standard OData and raises follow-up alerts outside IFS. Nothing is written back, so there is no upgrade footprint and no new object inside the client’s system.
7.About the author
Dariusz Myśliwiec has 18 years hands-on with IFS (Apps 7.5–10 and IFS Cloud). He is an IFS Certified Associate Consultant and PRINCE2® 7 certified. Based in Kraków, he delivers remotely across Europe and globally as an independent practice, so you talk to the consultant who builds it.
Selected clients: Fugro · LGC · BVI Medical · Betafence (PRÆSIDIAD) · Barlinek · NGK Ceramics · Newag · Oleofarm.
IFS is a registered trademark of IFS AB; this practice is not affiliated with IFS AB.
Follow up while the price you quoted still stands
Tell me where quotes go quiet in your pipeline. On a 30-minute fit call we check whether a rule that flags quotations approaching expiry with no order raised fits your data. The SCM Automation Pack runs three rules today (unconfirmed purchase orders, late deliveries, stock below minimum), so this would be an additional rule built to order. A dry-run week runs before anything reaches a salesperson’s inbox.
