Every business prices its jobs its own way. A quote template is yours: the figures you price from, the questions you ask about a job, what the job costs you line by line, how you go from cost to price, and what the customer sees. Your team answers the questions and the quote is made for them, with the job's cost and margin kept for you and never shown to the customer.
Templates are set up under Sales, Setup, Quote Templates, by anyone with Business settings. Quotes are built from them by anyone who works sales, on an opportunity's Quotes tab.
Cost, markup and margin
These three are easy to mix up, so the app always says both:
- Cost is what the job costs you to do: the time, the materials, the outside services, the freight.
- Markup is added on top of the cost. A 50% markup on a $100.00 cost is a $150.00 price.
- Margin is the share of the price that is not cost. A 50% margin on a $100.00 cost is a $200.00 price: half of the $200.00 is yours.
A 50% markup is a 33.3% margin, and a 50% margin is a 100% markup. Choose whichever way you think about it; the price is worked out the same way either time.
Overhead is what running the business adds to every job: rent, insurance, the van, the office. It is a kind of cost of its own, so it can carry its own markup, and it is usually a cost line that is a percent of the labor, kept to the business so the customer never sees it as a line.
How you price, for every template
Under Sales, Setup, Quote Templates, the How You Price card holds what every template shares:
- The kinds of cost your lines are sorted into (materials, labor, equipment, outside services, freight, overhead, and any of your own), so a markup can differ by kind: one material marked up more than another, say, when you make each a kind of its own.
- Standard costs: what a step of your work costs you each time, kept once for every template, such as filling a unit, setting up a press or an hour on a machine. A cost line reads one as
std.filling. Change it here and every quote built after that reads the new cost; a quote built already keeps what it read. A standard cost a template in use reads stays on the list until that template no longer reads it. - The margin to warn under: a quote being built under it says so.
Make a template
- Go to Sales, Setup, Quote Templates and choose New template.
- Start from one of the starting templates (a service job, a made-to-order job, a project in phases, a recurring service, a rental by the day or week), from nothing, or from a copy of one of yours. The ones your kind of business usually uses come first, and every one is there for every business.
- Name it for the kind of job it prices, such as Kitchen remodel, and choose Make the template.
A starting template brings the general way of working that kind of job out and nothing else: every figure in it is blank, with a sentence saying what belongs there. It cannot be published until each one is yours.
The template opens in tabs:
- About: its name, what it is for, what still stands in the way of publishing it, and its versions.
- Your Figures: your own numbers the cost lines read, such as your cost an hour (what an hour of the work costs you with pay, taxes and benefits, not what you charge), the minutes a unit takes, or what delivery costs you.
- Questions: what the wizard asks of each job, in order. A number with its unit (square feet, hours, guests), a choice (each choice can carry numbers of its own, such as a material and what a square foot of it costs you), yes or no, or words that go on the quote. Mark an answer Kept to the business when it is something like what a job's materials cost you, so the customer's words never say it.
- Costs: the cost lines, in order. Each is measured one of five ways: a fixed amount; so much per unit (how many times the cost of one); hours times a rate; one of your products' or parts' own cost as your stock keeps it, times how many; or a percent of the lines above it. A line can count only when something is true, such as a rush job.
- Options: what a customer may add, each with its own cost lines.
- Pricing: a markup or a target margin, on the job as a whole or a different one for each kind of cost; price levels; a minimum charge; price breaks for bigger orders; how each line of the quote is rounded; and the margin under which a quote being built warns you.
- The Quote: what the customer sees. A line for each cost line you choose to show (the rest rolled into another line, or kept to the business and shared by the lines they see), a line for each section (each phase of a project), or one total with the scope in words. Also the prices at other quantities, the quote's title, its scope at the top, its terms and how many days it holds.
- Try It: the wizard, run on the draft as it stands. Nothing is kept.
Price levels
A price level gives customers whose account buys on one of your price lists a markup or margin of its own, on every line of their quote: your wholesale or distributor list, say, at a lower margin than everyone else. Price lists are kept under Products, Wholesale, Price lists, where an account is put on one. A quote built on an opportunity starts at the level of the list its account buys on, when the template has one for it; whoever builds it can pick another, or the template's own pricing.
Bigger orders: price breaks, a price each, and other quantities
- Price breaks read one number question, such as how many units: from so many and up, so much off. A break shows either as a percent off each line of the quote, or in the price itself, with nothing shown off, so the price of one steps down as the order grows.
- A price each: shown as one total, the quote's line can say so many at a price each (60 sets at $30.67) instead of one amount; on The Quote tab, choose the number question it is counted by. A cost line shown on its own can do the same, such as 12 hours at $85.00 an hour.
- Prices at other quantities: the job priced at other quantities of one number question too, such as 250, 500 and 1,000 units, each with its price and the price of one. They are shown to the customer beside the quote, so they see what a bigger order costs; the quote itself is priced at the quantity answered.
Formulas
How many and what one costs are formulas, in the same small language as custom fields: arithmetic, if, round, min, max and the rest, over the names of your figures, your standard costs, the answers and the lines above. A choice is read by its numbers (material.cost_per_sqft) or its name (material.name); a standard cost by std. and its name (std.filling); a line above by labor.quantity or labor.cost. Money in a formula is in dollars. For example, hours of making for an order of units is units * minutes_each / 60, and filling them is units at std.filling each.
What the customer reads can say an answer, as {area}, or how many of a line, as {labor.quantity}, and never a cost, a figure or an answer kept to the business.
Publishing and versions
Change the draft as much as you like, and Save the draft. When it is ready, choose Publish and say what changed. Quotes are built from the published version from then on. A quote built already keeps the version it was built from, so it can always say how it was worked out; a draft quote can be worked out again on the newest version, and you are told what that changes first.
A template that is no longer used is archived: no new quote is built from it, and every quote built from it still says how. A template never published can be removed.
Build a quote
- Open the opportunity and its Quotes tab, then choose Build from a template (it is there once a template is published).
- Pick the template, then answer its questions a step at a time. The job's cost, the price and the margin are worked out along the bottom as you type, and the margin warns you when it is under your floor.
- On the last step you see every cost line. Choose one to change its quantity or cost for this job; say why, and the reason is kept with the quote. Include each option in the job, offer it beside the quote with its price, or leave it off. Where the template has price levels, pick the level (it starts at the one the account buys on); where it prices other quantities, change them for this quote. You can also set the price by hand for this job, with why.
- What the Customer Sees shows the quote's lines as the customer will read them. Choose Make the quote.
The quote is a draft like any other: change it, then send it. Its How It Was Built card shows your team the template and version it came from, the cost, the price and the margin, the price level, and any line changed for the job. Options offered beside it and the prices at other quantities are listed on the customer's page and the PDF with their prices; to choose one, they ask for changes, and you build a new version at it.
Best practices
- Fill in your figures from what the work really costs you: an hour with pay, taxes and benefits, not what you charge. A template is only as good as its figures.
- Keep a step that every kind of job shares, such as setting up a run or a delivery, as one standard cost, so a change to it is made once for every template.
- Count overhead as a cost line of its own, a percent of the labor kept to the business, rather than hiding it in the markup: the margin then says what the job really leaves you.
- Set a floor and heed its warning. A quote under it is worth a second look before it goes out.
- Use Try It with a job you quoted last month and compare the price with what you sent.
- For orders that grow, show the price of one stepping down and the prices at other quantities: the customer sees why a bigger order is worth it.
- Say why whenever you change a line or set the price by hand. The reason is what the next person reads on How It Was Built.
Programs, assistants and AI
The API's Quote templates calls read and change templates, work a quote out without keeping anything (POST /quotes/build) and make the quote (POST /quotes/build/save). An assistant can work quotes out and make draft quotes for you; changing a template is put to a person to approve, and publishing one is always a person's, in the app.