A quote under the floor goes out with a name on it.
Each class of customer carries a minimum margin. Below it, the quotation is neither blocked nor waved through — it requires an approval, and the approval stays on the quotation.
Three things the desk cannot get wrong unnoticed.
An expired table refuses to price. A margin under the floor asks for a name. A lane with a notice on it carries that notice into the quotation, at the moment someone is pricing it.
The floor is a question rather than a wall
Freight has thin weeks and accounts worth holding. A system that refused this quotation outright would be overruled by a phone call, and the real price would then live somewhere the system never sees. The floor therefore lets the quote through and takes a name in exchange.
This is what makes the month readable
At the end of a quarter the question is never was anything under the floor. It is which accounts, how far under, who approved them and what they said at the time. That is four fields, and they exist only if the system asked for them at the time.
An expired table has no opinion about today’s price.
A floor that can be crossed silently is not a floor.
The approval is the entire feature. Permission without a record is equivalent to no rule at all, and every office learns that within a month.
Why it is written down
A minimum margin that can be waved past leaves nothing behind. Three months later the account is losing money on every job and the history records nothing beyond the assumption that someone said yes. Recording the approval on the quotation costs the approver four seconds and replaces that assumption with a name, a time and a sentence.
Why it does not stop the quote
A hard block is routed around. The sales desk quotes from a spreadsheet, the shipment is created after the fact, and the system then holds neither the price nor the reason. Holding both and letting the quote go is the better outcome.
Four things it will not do.
An account that is quietly losing money is welcome.
The floor is set for its class, the lane it ships is priced, and what the approval screen keeps is shown. 45 minutes, on a demonstration company or on a copy of a spreadsheet the office already uses.