Create a quotation

A quotation is a priced proposal you give a client before there is a sale. It holds no money, it moves no stock, and it never blocks because something is out of stock — it is a document to send and negotiate. When the client says yes, one action turns it into a sell order, which is where the money and the inventory actually move.

Quotations live under Sales, in the list your team calls Quotes unless it has renamed them.

The list

Sales → Quotes shows the quotations of the team you are in — or only those of the branch you are standing in, when your team uses branches. Each row carries the folio, the client, the category, the tag, the date, the total and the status, and a branch column joins them when you are looking at every branch at once.

Two things about the list are worth knowing before you go looking for something:

• Unless you are the team owner, the Created By filter opens set to you, so you see your own quotations first. Clear it to see the rest, if your role reaches them.
• A quotation you opened but never saved is not listed. Nothing is left behind when you abandon the form.

The filter bar also narrows by status, category, tag and date range. Two buttons above it, Categories and Tags, are where those two classifications are created.

Start one

Create Quote, at the top right of the list. You need the create permission, and your plan has to have room: when the team has used every document its plan allows, creating stops and a message points you at your plans.

The button takes you straight into the form — there is no intermediate screen.

What the form asks

The client field also warns you, right there, when that client has an outstanding debt.

Add the products

The Product selector above the table searches your catalogue as you type. Pick one and it becomes a line.

If you work with a barcode reader, you do not need the selector: scan while no field is focused and the product with that code is added, or its variant picker opens. If the code matches nothing, the system offers to create the product with that code already filled in.

Each line shows the name, the price, the discount, the quantity and the line total, and adds a subtotal and a taxes column when your team invoices or has taxes enabled. What you can change per line:

• Quantity — free. Products that track stock show their current quantity underneath, for information only: a quotation is never blocked by stock.
• Price — editable only on products that allow it.
• Total — on those same products, you can type the total the line has to come to instead, and the price is worked out from it. See Capture a line by its total.
• Discount — the percent icon at the end of the row opens Discount for this product, where you enter a percentage or a fixed amount, before tax or on the final price with tax. A fixed amount comes off exactly: $0.01 off the final price takes one cent off the line. See How a line adds up, to the cent.
• Description — products sold by unit detail carry an editable note.
• Extras — products with numerical variations open a small form to add them.
• Reservation dates — reservable products carry the dates you chose.

The row also lets you duplicate a line, remove it, and drag it by its handle to reorder — the order you leave is the order the document prints in.

Under the table, the Subtotal row carries a discount icon that applies one discount across every product at once. It appears once the quotation has products and no line has a discount of its own — the two ways of discounting do not mix. Tax rows sit below it and can be removed one by one, and the Total closes the table. That total is the sum of the line totals, so it always matches what the lines show.

Terms and conditions

When your team uses terms and conditions, a section appears under the products with the terms that already apply — the ones marked for every document, plus the ones the products carry. You can add or remove terms for this document only, without touching the catalogue. A term marked as requiring acceptance says so.

Finish it, or leave it for later

Two buttons close the form.

Save as draft keeps the quotation as a draft. It checks the required fields and the quantities, and returns you to the list. A draft has no folio yet, can be edited again as many times as you like, and is the only state in which a quotation can be deleted outright — with the delete icon on its row in the list, which asks you to confirm. A draft has no page of its own yet: its row shows no view icon, and opening it takes you back to this form. It cannot be sent, linked or printed until you finish it.

Finish Quote issues it. Beyond the fields and quantities it also confirms that reservable products are actually free for their dates. Then the quotation becomes a sent quotation: it receives its folio — the next number for your team, or for your branch when your team uses branches — and it stops being editable in this form.

What you see after you finish

A panel opens over the list with everything you can do with the quotation you just issued:

• View — the quotation's own file inside the system.
• PDF — three controls side by side: open the PDF, download it, or send it by email.
• Send by whatsapp — opens WhatsApp with the message your team configured and the link already inside. It only appears when the client has a phone number and your plan still allows sending documents.
• Direct link — the public address of the quotation. Click the field to copy it.
• Return — back to the list.

What the client sees

The link opens a public page with your business details, the quotation, its folio, its date, its expiration date and its products, and a Download PDF button. The first time somebody opens it without being signed in, the quotation records the visit, and the date of that first access appears on the quotation for you to see.

The page carries an Accept proposal button. The client accepts there, the quotation moves to "accepted by client", and the person responsible for it is notified. If terms required acceptance, the client answers them in the same step, and what they accepted is kept as evidence.

Members of your own team see the page too, but they cannot accept on the client's behalf — the page says so. While a quotation is still waiting for an answer and its expiration date has passed, the page warns the reader that prices may have changed. The number of days is set in Settings, under Days for Quotes, and is counted from the quotation's date.

Turn it into a sale

Once a quotation is finished, its row in the list and its own page carry a Create order action. It builds a sell order from the quotation: the same client, branch, products, prices, discounts and taxes, the same description and payment conditions, and the accepted terms carried across. The two documents stay linked, the quotation is marked as converted, and you land in the new sell order ready to capture the payment. See Create a sell order.

The new sell order belongs to whoever converted the quotation, not to whoever wrote it, so it appears in your own list.

Create order is not offered while a term the client had to accept is still unanswered. It will refuse to convert when:

• a product that tracks stock does not have enough of it, or a reservable product is no longer free;
• your plan has no room for another document.

After it is issued

Rebuild a sent quotation

When a quotation you already sent has to change — a product, a quantity, a price — recycle it instead of cloning it. A clone takes a new folio and leaves the old quotation alive, so the client ends up with two; recycling keeps the folio.

Recycle is offered on a quotation that was sent, accepted by the client or discarded, and has a client. It is not offered on a draft, on a quotation already converted into an order, on a cancelled one, or on one that was already replaced.

1. Press Recycle, from the row in the list or from the quotation's page. A confirmation tells you that a new version will be created for you to edit, and that this quotation is only replaced once you finish the new one. Press Recycle.
2. Edit the new version. It keeps the client, the branch, the responsible, the date, the description, the payment conditions, the products and the terms you added or removed by hand. The client's acceptance and any cancellation stay with the original, so the client has to accept the new version again.
3. Press Finish Quote. In that one step the original is marked as Replaced and the new version is sent with the same folio.

Until you send it, nothing happens to the original: its link, its PDF and its sends stay as they were, and the client can still accept it. What it no longer offers is Cancel, Create order and Recycle again. Save as draft keeps the new version as a draft and leaves the original waiting. A new version you never finish is deleted after seven days, and the original offers all its actions again.

A replaced quotation is no longer in the default list; choose Replaced in the status filter to see it. It can only be looked at and cloned, and it is never sent again. Its public link opens the version that replaced it.

If two people recycle the same quotation at the same time, the first version sent replaces the original. The other can no longer be sent: you see This version can no longer be finished, and nothing changes.

Who can do it

In Team → Roles, each row of the permissions grid is something the system holds and each column an action, written here as Row: Column. A role needs:

The team owner can do all of it without any box ticked. A role with Quote: Only sees their own data reads and works its own quotations without See, but still needs Update and Delete to change or cancel them.