Who can accept the offer? A practical authority check

Keep the supplier’s approval and the buyer’s purchasing authority distinct throughout an agent-assisted transaction.

An agent-assisted buying workflow has at least two decisions to keep clear. The supplier decides what it is prepared to offer. The buyer decides who or what may accept that offer on its behalf. Recording one of those decisions does not answer the other.

Before connecting a purchasing tool to a consequential action, bring the relevant business owners together to define the permissions the workflow needs. Use a bounded transaction and a concrete offer version as the starting point.

Define the supplier’s side

Identify the products, service scope, price limits and terms the supplier’s workflow may prepare or send. Specify which exceptions require a person’s approval and what information that person needs to see.

Keep the decision tied to the offer version. A price exception approved for one package should remain linked to that package. If the product, service or conditions change, bring the affected decision back to its owner.

Ask the buyer to define its own limits

The buyer’s owner should identify the permitted action, relevant scope and applicable limits for its tool. Agree how the participating systems will establish that authority for the proposed workflow and what happens when the information is missing or out of date.

A tool identity, a readable purchase request and a recorded purchasing permission answer different questions. Check each one in the agreed workflow rather than treating a familiar account or convincing message as sufficient on its own.

Design the exception path

Test a changed quantity, a price outside the permitted range and an offer revision after approval. Identify who receives the exception and how the correct version returns to review. Include interruption and access-removal cases in the evaluation.

• Supplier-side offer and approval limits
• Buyer-side permissions defined by the buyer
• The action and offer version being considered
• A clear escalation route for unresolved authority
• A record of the decision and the resulting handoff

The practical goal is a workflow in which each participating organization can explain its own decision. Agree the commercial and legal arrangements with the appropriate owners alongside the technical connection.