Quotes are available within Softbase and require minimal setup to utilize in the application.

To begin, you will want to establish how long your quotes will be viable before expiring and what numbering sequence you would like to use for your quotes to differentiate them from valid work orders. Some companies will use a leading 9 rather than the branch, but this would be at your preference to determine. 

This is setup within Department setup on the Doc #s/Dates tab.  You can also decide whether to perform credit checks when opening quotes or to allow all quotes regardless of available credit.

If you would like to add an additional disclaimer or information to appear on the quote document, you can also add verbiage to the quote tab of the department within department setup and this will display on the quote when printed/previewed.

The next component you will want to consider and setup is how to handle parts that get added to a quote, especially for parts that may need to be backordered.  This is controlled within your Company Setup on the Invoicing tab. It is important to note that parts that get added to a quote WILL NOT impact inventory while it is a quote, parts are not pulled from inventory to the order until the quote is opened to an active document. The parts will reduce your inventory on hands upon being added to the open work order only, not to the quote.

The "Quote to order" checkbox will prevent parts from automatically filling when it is opened from a quote to an open order. Instead, the parts will be flagged on the open work order as "WO hold" and will need to be filled using a parts import option.  There is more information on that functionality here: https://support.softbasedev.com/portal/en/kb/articles/work-order-quote-hold-for-parts

The "Quote to Order: Allow Partial Qty BO" option will allow the work order to fill partial amounts from any available stock when it is converted from a quote to an open document and any amounts that cannot be filled will be backordered. For example, if the quote called for 7 of a specific part and there was an available on hand of 3 in inventory, when opening the quote the system would fill 3 to that order and then backorder the remaining 4.  If this is not checked, the system will backorder the full quantity of the part until enough are available to fill the entire order.

The "Quote to Order" Prompt for Each BO" option allows the user to specify additional information such as cost, preferred vendor, and priority on a per part basis when the parts are being backordered during the quote open process.  This option is detailed further in the following document as needed: https://support.softbasedev.com/portal/en/kb/articles/quote-to-order-backordering-per-part

Once you have set your preferences for the quote setup and how the system should handle them, you can open a quote to your customer using the invoicing module. You will populate the sale information and customer as normal, but instead of opening the order, you will select the quote option in the top toolbar to open as a quote:

This will open the document as an open quote. This will be represented as an open quote in the system and can be printed/previewed/emailed to the customer as needed.

Once you decide to move forward with the quote, you can choose to open the quote; this is done by accessing the File Menu of the invoicing module while on the open quote and selecting to "Quote to Order" which will open the quote into a new open work order under the next available document number, or by choosing "Quote to an Existing Order" which will allow you to specify which open order the quote should be opened into.

Once the quote has been opened into a work order, it will update to be an "accepted quote" which means it has been converted to a work order.  You can, however, continue to open the quote into more work orders as needed even after it has been accepted.  We see this used commonly for customers that may make routine purchases where the quote is created as a template and gets opened on a revolving basis, such as a monthly parts purchase, etc.

If you do not move forward with the quote and it will not be turned into an order, you can also manually choose to cancel the quote--this will void the quote and will not allow it to be converted to an open order while canceled.  This is done via the "Cancel Quote/Estimate" option and this will cancel only the quote you have open in the invoicing module.

The option below this to "cancel expired quotes" allows you to cancel quotes in mass based on their department setup days of expiration.  This can be used to automatically cancel any quotes that have been open for longer than the days allowed in the department setup. Quotes will not automatically expire and this must be completed to cancel any quotes that have hit their expiration days. The user will simply open the option and then select all branches they would like to cancel expired quotes for, then hit okay and the system will cancel any quotes that have been opened longer than their setup allows.

Should you need to reopen a canceled quote for any reason, you can do so by choosing the "Re-Open Quote/Estimate" under the main file menu. This will update an expired quote and bring it back to an open status, where it can then be converted to an open work order.