Quotes

Overview

A quote passes through these states: draft, sent, accepted, partially accepted, rejected, expired, converted and — after a revision — superseded.

The last is the interesting one: converted means something came of the quote — a project, an order, an invoice, depending on the installed modules. The quote remains and evidences what was promised; delivery runs on alongside.

The list shows quote, status, total and validity date, plus a total of open quotes — the figure that shows how much is currently in the balance. It can be filtered by status, customer, owner and brand; the brand filter applies in addition to the brand chosen in the top bar.

Core tasks

Create a quote. New quote requires a title and a customer; brand, document currency, validity date, owner and introduction are optional. The quote's language comes from the customer (otherwise from the brand) and can be changed in the document header. Left empty, the introduction takes the standard text in the quote's language — see Finance settings.

Enter line items. Per line: description, quantity, unit, unit price, discount in percent and VAT rate; subtotal, tax and total are calculated. The tax display decides whether net or gross is shown. If a quote block is linked to the product of a new line, the quote suggests it once (Insert places it with filled placeholders as free text after the product, Ignore does not).

Set the texts. Introduction and terms can be written freely or inserted from a text template: the selection above each text field shows the text blocks of the brand and of the quote's language plus the language-neutral ones; a chosen block replaces the text, Save draft or Save keeps it.

Send and share. Send takes the regular route to the customer. If a recipient has access to the customer portal, their quote email carries the View and approve online button: if they may approve quotes, the link signs them in once (valid for 7 days) and goes straight to the approval page; otherwise it leads there via sign-in. This also applies to the portal access of another company of the same group that is enabled for the quote's customer and may approve quotes there — its link opens the portal right in that customer; without the approval right there it gets no link. Every recipient gets their own link; the communication history shows the link without the sign-in key. Your own templates include the button with the placeholder {{ approval_block }} (address only: {{ approval_url }}); an unchanged standard template is updated by the standard-data follow-up itself. Share additionally creates a share link — and the notice attached to it is to be taken literally: anybody with this link can view the quote. There is no further check; treat it like the quote itself. Only a real quote is sent: at least one priced item that is not optional (headings, texts and optional items alone are not enough), and the customer needs a billing address with street, city and country. If one of them is missing, the message says what to complete.

Close. Accept, Accept partially, Reject and Convert complete the process — see Partial acceptance below.

Follow-up document. After converting with an order, the card Orders from this quote names the order that was created, with status and total; its number opens it directly.

Adopt a negotiated price as customer price. With the module Customer prices, the card Adopt as customer price lists the item lines with their net unit price after the line discount. One click turns it into a permanent customer term from the line quantity — the next quote for this customer picks up the price by itself, see Prices & units.

From a ticket. In the ticket, Create quote creates a draft: customer, contact person (the ticket's reporter, provided they belong to that customer), title and brand come from the ticket. The quote names its source ticket under From ticket — the number opens it; anyone not allowed to see the ticket does not see the reference.

Renew. Once a quote has expired, Renew appears. The dialog asks for the way first and then for the new validity date:

• As a new quote — a copy is created as a draft with all items, texts and terms. The expired

quote stays as it is, because the customer holds it; the number for the new document is assigned when it is sent.

• Reuse this quote — the same document returns to draft with the new date. Number and history

stay; after editing you send it again.

An expired quote is therefore no longer a dead end. Accepted, rejected and converted quotes cannot be renewed — those hold a decision, not a lapsed deadline.

New version. A sent quote the customer has not decided on yet is not changed in place but via New version in the header bar: the dialog asks for the new validity date and creates a new version as a draft — with all items, texts, terms, language and surcharge. The new version carries the next version number (version 2, 3 …) and refers to its predecessor; the predecessor moves to superseded and remains as the record of what the customer saw. There is only ever one running version. After editing, you send the new version as usual.

Produce a PDF. The quote can be output as a PDF — layout and brand come from the document templates. In the document header, Document template picks a different template of the brand (or a brand-neutral one); empty means the brand's standard template. The payment term is set there as well.

Language of the quote

Every quote has its own language. On creation it is taken from the customer (without a customer language from the brand) and can be changed in the document header at any time — a German customer can therefore receive an English quote. If the customer changes, the language follows unless you chose it yourself. The language governs:

• the PDF (labels, date and number format),
• the quote email and the follow-up reminders,
• the text blocks: the default of the language is pre-filled, otherwise the language-neutral one,
• the item texts: when you pick an item, name and description come from its translation into the

quote language — if there is none, from the default language. A text you write on the line yourself always wins.

Quotes from a deal, a ticket or a project change request get their language the same way. Older quotes without a chosen language keep following the recipient's language.

Partial acceptance

A customer does not always accept everything. Two cases are covered:

• Adding optional lines. Optional lines only count towards the total once the customer chooses

them. If the quote has optional lines, Accept asks which are added. Only chosen options count — the quote is then accepted.

• Declining lines. Accept partially shows all priced lines; untick what the customer does not

accept. The quote is then partially accepted. Declining everything is not an acceptance — use Reject for that.

The customer can do the same in the customer portal, see Documents in the portal. The accepted scope becomes binding: the line list marks chosen options chosen and declined lines declined, header total and PDF show the accepted scope, and the order, project, contract and licences from the conversion take over only the accepted lines. A chosen option is no longer an option in the order but a regular line. A partially accepted quote can be converted like an accepted one.

Surcharge at document level

Besides the document discount, the quote has a surcharge — a rush or small-quantity surcharge, for instance. You set it below the line items as a percentage, an amount or both. It applies to the same line net as the document discount and, like it, is spread proportionally across the tax rates, so VAT is calculated per rate from the net including the surcharge. Discount and surcharge are separate fields: a surcharge is not a negative discount, and the discount stays capped at the net while the surcharge does not. The PDF shows it as its own line Surcharge in the totals block. In the order from the quote, document discount and surcharge appear as lines per tax rate — totals and VAT stay identical to the cent, and the invoice takes them over. A redeemed value voucher covers the surcharge as well — with sufficient balance the customer pays nothing more (see Promotions & vouchers).

Automatic follow-up

For sent quotes that get no answer, the module ships two automations — the rules run in the one automation engine, which you adjust under Settings → Automations (category sales):

• Stage 1 — task for the owner (active out of the box): if a quote is still open 7 days

after sending, the owner gets the task Follow up quote …, linked to customer and quote and due in two days.

• Stage 2 — reminder to the customer (off out of the box): after 14 days a reminder email

goes to the quote's contact person (without one, to the main contact) — in the quote's language, via the regular dispatch route and with an entry in the communication history. You maintain the text in the mail template finance.quote_follow_up (Finanzen: Angebot nachfassen).

The number of days is the offset of each automation. Only quotes in the sent status are reminded; accepted, rejected or expired ones are not. There is exactly one run per quote and stage. Further stages are added as an additional automation with the same trigger Quote sent.

Quote variants

A quote can contain alternative variants — for example Basic and Premium, or A, B, C. All variants share one quote number. When accepting, the customer chooses exactly one of them; only that variant goes into the order.

This is what separates variants from optional lines: an optional line is an add-on the customer can take. A variant is a complete package that rules out the other variants.

Create variants. In the draft, choose Offer variants below the lines. Two variants are created (Basic, Premium); label and description are free, Add variant adds more (ten at most). A single variant does not exist — it would not be a choice.

Assign lines. Under Assign lines you decide per line which variant it belongs to. Lines without a variant apply to every variant — setup, travel and project management appear only once in the quote and cannot be forgotten in one of the variants. In the line list, every assigned line carries the tag Variant: ….

Read the totals. Every variant shows its own total: net, VAT and gross, calculated from the shared and its own lines, with the document discount and VAT per tax rate. The quote header — and with it the list, the key figures and the value of the deal — carries the leading variant: the chosen one, and as long as nothing is chosen the first one as a guide value.

Send. Every variant needs at least one priced line of its own, otherwise the quote cannot be sent. The PDF shows the shared lines first, then every variant as a section of its own and, per variant, a totals block Total when choosing “…”.

Accept. If the customer accepts in the customer portal, they choose the variant there — without a choice the acceptance is refused. If you record the acceptance yourself, Accept asks for the variant. The chosen variant is marked afterwards and the quote header carries its total.

Convert. The order created from the quote takes over only the shared lines and the chosen variant, with consecutive line numbers. Project, contract and licences from the conversion also see only the chosen variant. The invoice from the order therefore contains exactly what the customer accepted. A quote with variants cannot be converted without a chosen variant.

Fields in detail

The What it does column answers what changes in the system — not what the field is called. The grey name behind the label is the API field: the same thing runs under that name through automation, import and AI tools.

Draft and issued are two states. While the quote is a draft, every field can be changed. Issuing turns it into a document with a number and fixed amounts; after that, changes mean a new version.

Document header

Line items and document discount

The item list items has the same structure as on the invoice: description, quantity, unit, unit price, discount %, VAT % — plus headings, free text, subtotals and page breaks as row types of their own.

Reorder lines. The number in front of each line is its handle: drag it with the mouse, or focus it with the keyboard and move it one place with arrow up/down, or to the very top or bottom with Home or End. The arrow buttons at the end of the line remain for small steps.

Accepting, rejecting, sending

Settings & permissions

• Module module.quote.
• finance.quote.view, .create, .edit, .send and finance.quote.convert

for conversion — five separate permissions, because writing, sending and converting carry different weight.

• finance.quote.reassign_owner for Change owner — also on sent and accepted quotes and in bulk

(list: select quotes, Change owner). Only the owner changes, the document stays as it is; every change is recorded in the audit log. Granted to Accounting by default.

• A completed quote is no longer editable. The line-item list says so. That is not a lock for its

own sake: a quote still editable after acceptance would not be a document.

• The commerce core does the calculating. Tax, rounding and amounts in cents follow the core's

rules, see commerce core.

FAQ & troubleshooting

I can no longer change line items. Then the quote is completed. Create a new one rather than bending the history.

The customer cannot see the quote. Check whether it was sent — or use the share link. In the portal, quotes additionally appear through the release there, see Customer portal.

No PDF is produced. Check whether an active document template exists for quote, brand and language. If the installation's PDF generation is missing, no document is produced at all.

The introduction is empty. Then no standard text is marked as such, see Finance settings.

quote.quotes · Available from version 0.5.0