In workflow research, Offer is one of the states of work items and means a state in which someone is being requested to execute some work item.
Although a participant offered is a candidate of a executor of the work item, he/she is not yet in charge of the work item. So, the participant offered does not necessarily execute it. Therefore, offers for some work item could be made to multiple participants. When an executor of the corresponding work item is assigned from participants offered, the state of the work item is changed to "Allocation state." Once the state of the work item is changed to "Allocation state," the assigned executor has to execute the task. Sometimes the state can be changed to "Allocation state" without going through "Offer state."

Some examples of "Offer state" are: a state in which some petition is submitted to a window, a state in which someone is being asked whether he undertakes some task or not, a state in which executors of some task are being wanted, and so on.

Besides "Offer state," processing states include "Create state," "Allocation state," "Start state," and "Complete state." In addition, manpower and physical resources required to execute a work item are called resources even though we called them "candidates for a work item" above.