An order header will contain detail about the customer specifically and will include details pertaining to the account that will be invoiced and accounting details. An order item will contain details of the specific physical or logical inventory items (not available on the header) and any sales credits.

Bundles are groups of products or services sold together with special terms and conditions such as discounted pricing or special product or service offers. Bundle management assists order management systems by enabling them to handle the complexities of bundles typically seen in the enterprise space.

A bundle is often presented to the customer as one product but really a bundle is a collection of specific products and services. All the constituent line items have different and unique attributes, and may all be provisioned in different ways. An order management system must identify the characteristics of each individual product or service, preserve the concept of the bundle, and then pass the information to downstream systems.

Approvals are a key component to both contract and order management systems. In order for approvals to be effective, they must be communicated automatically to the right people, provide visibility to those involved, and be actionable to all participants. When a contract or an order satisfies certain criteria, approvals are triggered and sent to relevant parties. The approvals are typically sent via e-mail, but they can be sent via text message or other forms of mobile communication.

The approval notifications either contain enough information to allow the user to make an actionable decision, or they redirect the user to the originating system where they can view details of the contract or order. Once an actionable decision has been made, the contract or order is automatically moved to the next logical step, and the process is repeated, or it reaches a completed state.