Entering a Quotation - Terms Card
This page describes the fields on the 'Terms' card of the Quotation record. Please follow the links below for descriptions of the other cards:
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- Date
- Paste Special
Choose date
- The date of the Quotation: the current date according to the computer's clock will be entered as a default.
- Payment Terms
- Paste Special
Payment Terms setting, Sales/Purchase Ledger
- Default taken from Contact record for the Customer (Sales Pay. Terms)
- The Payment Term that you enter here will be transferred to any Orders and Invoices raised from the Quotation. It will ensure that the correct Payment Terms will be printed on Order and Invoice documentation (in the Language of the Customer if necessary) and, in the case of an Invoice, it will be used to calculate the Due Date. You can also use Payment Terms to configure a system of early settlement discounts.
- Valid Until
- Paste Special
Choose date
- The last date of validity of the Quotation. If you need this to be printed on any documentation relating to the Quotation, add the "Valid Until Date" field to your Form Template design.
- Usually, no default Valid Until Date is offered. If you would like a default to be offered, specify a number of days in the Default Valid Days field in the Quotation Settings setting. The default Valid Until Date in every new Quotation will then be Current Date + Valid Until Days.
- Make Contact
- Paste Special
Choose date
- As a reminder, enter the date when you next want to contact the Customer regarding the Quotation.
- You can use the Make Contact Date as a search criterion in the Quotation Journal report: you can therefore use this report to produce daily call sheets.
- Alternatively, you can use Activities both to produce daily 'to do' lists and to maintain contact histories. When you generate an Activity from a Quotation using the 'Workflow Activity' function on the Create menu (Windows/macOS) or + menu (iOS/Android): the Make Contact Date of the Quotation will be copied to the Start Date field in the new Activity. This will ensure that follow-up calls are correctly scheduled. The Activity will appear in the Salesman's Task Manager.
- Decision Date
- Paste Special
Choose date
- The date when the Customer will make or did make their final decision about the Quotation.
- This field will automatically be set to the current date when you mark the Quotation as Accepted or Rejected and saved.
- In Open Quotations, this date will be used by the Pipeline report to predict future monthly sales. The Quotation Forecasting report is a list of Open Quotations sorted by Decision Date, although the Decision Date is not itself shown in the report.
- In Accepted and Rejected Quotations, this date will be used by the Quotation Decision Statistics and the Quotation Salesman Statistics reports, which analyse the time taken for Quotations to be accepted or rejected.
- You must enter a Decision Date if you are using the Require Decision Date option in the Quotation Settings setting.
- Our Reference
- Use this field if you need to identify the Quotation by means other than the Quotation Number. A default will be taken from the Our Ref field on the 'Sales' card of the Person record of the current user. A Reference entered here will be copied to any Orders and Invoices created from the Quotation.
- Attention
- Paste Special
Contact Persons in Contact register
- Default taken from Contact record for the Customer (Primary Contact)
- Record here the person for whose attention the Quotation is to be marked. The 'Paste Special' function will only list Contact Persons belonging to the specified Customer.
- Reference
- Record here any additional code by which the Quotation can be identified. This Reference will be copied to any Orders and Invoices that you create from the Quotation, and from the Invoices to the Reference field in the resulting Nominal Ledger Transactions. When you receive payment against the Invoices, the Reference will be copied to the Reference Number field on flip G of the relevant Receipt row.
- Tags/Objects
- Paste Special
Tag/Object register, Nominal Ledger/System module
- You can assign up to 20 Tags/Objects, separated by commas, to a Quotation. You might define separate Tags/Objects to represent different departments, cost centres or product types. This provides a flexible method of analysis that you can use in Nominal Ledger reports. Usually the Tags/Objects specified here will represent the Customer and the Salesman.
- In the Nominal Ledger Transactions generated from Invoices eventually resulting from a Quotation, any Tags/Objects specified here will be assigned as follows:
- By default, they will be assigned to the credit posting to the Sales Account(s), and, if the Invoices will update the stock valuation in the Nominal Ledger, to the Cost of Sales postings.
These assignments will not occur if you are using the Skip Header A/C Objects on Sales and COS A/C option in the Account Usage S/L setting.
- If you are using the Tags/Objects on Debtor Account option in the same setting, these Tags/Objects will be assigned to the debit posting to the Debtor Account.
- If you are using the Tags/Objects on VAT Account option in the same setting ('VAT / Tax' card), they will be assigned to the credit posting(s) to the Output VAT Account(s).
- Any Sales Tags/Objects specified in the Contact record for the Customer will be copied to here as a default, as will any Tag/Object specified in the Person record for the Salesman. Tags/Objects representing the Branch in which the client machine is located will also be copied here, taken from the Sales Tags/Objects field in the Contact record for the Branch. The Branch itself will be copied from the Local Machine setting in the User Settings module and will be visible on the 'Del. Terms' card of the Quotation.
- Salesman
- Paste Special
Person register, System module and Global User register, Technics module
- Default taken from Contact record for the Customer or current user
- Enter the Signature of the Salesman responsible for the Quotation here. You can enter more than one Signature, separated by commas.
- You can produce separate Quotation Journal reports for each Salesman and, once you have converted a Quotation into an Order or Invoice, there are many reports in the Sales Orders and Sales Ledger modules that can be broken down by Salesman. One is the Bonus, Salesman report, which you can use to calculate commission on Items sold, using the Bonus setting in the Sales Ledger, the Bonus % field on the 'Pricing' card of each Item record or the Bonus field on the 'Sales' card of the Person record. If you specified more than one Salesman, the commission will be divided between them.
- Generating an Activity from the Quotation using the 'Workflow Activity' function on the Create menu (Windows/macOS) or + menu (iOS/Android) will place a reminder in the Salesman's Task Manager to call the Customer on the Make Contact Date.
- You can also specify a Salesman or Salesmen in an individual Quotation row (on flip D). If an Invoice results from the Quotation, the Bonus, Salesman report will assign any commission for the row in question to the Salesman specified in the row only (i.e. not to the Salesman specified in the header). However, the 'Workflow Activity' function will not create Activities for the row Salesman, and the Quotation will not be recognised as belonging to the row Salesman by the Limited Access feature.
- This field is also used by the Limited Access feature: please refer to the description of the Sales Group field on the 'Price List' card for details.
- Project
- Paste Special
Project register, Job Costing module (if installed)
- If you are using the Job Costing module, you can enter a Project Number here to signal that the Quotation is connected to a specific Project. The Customer, Currency and Tags/Objects will be brought in to the Quotation, and the Salesman in the Project or, if that field is blank, the Project Manager 1 will be brought in to the Salesman field in the Quotation.
- If you create an Order from a Quotation that is connected to a Project, you will be able to issue Deliveries from the Order in the usual way, but you will need to raise associated Invoices from the Job Costing module, using the 'Create Project Invoices' Maintenance function.
- You can also create a new Project from a Quotation, using the 'Project' function on the Create menu. This function will copy the Project Number of the new Project to this field automatically. If this field is not empty, the function will not create a new Project.
- Please refer here for more details about connecting Quotations to Projects.
- Quotation Class
- Paste Special
Quotation Classes setting, Quotations module
- Use this field to assign an optional Quotation Class to the Quotation. Quotation Classes allow you to categorise Quotations for reporting or prioritising. One use might be to distinguish those that are open, won or lost.
- When you convert a Quotation into an Order, you can choose to have the Quotation Class copied to the Order Class field in the new Order. Do this by selecting the Transfer Quotation Class to Order option in the Order Settings setting (Sales Orders module).
- You must enter a Quotation Class if you are using the Require Quotation Class option in the Quotation Settings setting.
- If you are using the Workflow Overview to monitor the progress of Quotations, you will be able to display the Open Quotations belonging to each Class in separate columns. You will be able to change the Class in Quotations by dragging them between columns, and you will also be able to create Orders from Quotations by dragging and dropping.
- Probability
- Use this field to record the percentage probability that an Order will result from the Quotation. This figure will be used by the Quotation Forecasting report, and also by the Forecast report in the Sales Orders module. If you leave this field blank, the probability will be assumed to be 100% in these reports.
- If you change the Status of the Quotation to Accepted or create an Order or Invoice from a Quotation, the Probability will be set to 100%. If you change the Status to Rejected, the Probability will be set to 0%.
- Priority
- You can use this field to grade the importance of each Quotation. This is for information only.
- Status
- At any time a Quotation can be in one of three states, to help with the work flow and for reporting purposes. These states are as follows:
- Open
- When you first enter a Quotation, it will be marked as Open. You can use the Outstanding Quotations report (previously known as the Quotation Stock report) to list Open Quotations.
- Only Open Quotations will be shown in the Workflow Overview.
- Accepted
- When the Customer agrees to go ahead with a Quotation, you should mark it as Accepted. The Probability will be changed to 100%, and the current date will be placed in the Decision Date field.
- If you create an Order or an Invoice from a Quotation, the Quotation will be marked as Accepted automatically.
- You can have a text (SMS) message sent automatically to the Customer whenever you mark a Quotation as Accepted and save it, to confirm that you have received their acceptance of the Quotation. You can also have a text (SMS) message sent automatically to a responsible member of staff. Please refer to the Contact Quotation Alerts page (for the message to the Customer) and the Internal Quotation Alerts page (for the message to the member of staff) for details about these features.
- Rejected
- When the Customer decides not to go ahead with a Quotation, you should mark it as Rejected. The Probability (below) will be changed to 0%, and the current date will be placed in the Decision Date field. You cannot create Orders or Invoices from Rejected Quotations.
- If you need Quotations to pass through an approval process before they can be marked as Accepted or Rejected, you can configure such a process using the Approval Rules register in the Business Alerts module. Please refer to the description of the Approval Status field on the 'Inv. Address' card for brief details about the approval process and here for full details.
- Closed
- Tick this box when the Quotation is no longer required. You cannot create Orders and Invoices from Closed Quotations, which will be excluded from all reports.
- In most circumstances, when a Customer decides not to go ahead with a Quotation, you should mark it as Rejected and not Closed. This will mean the Quotation Decision Statistics report will use it in calculating an average acceptance rate (the percentage of Quotations that are converted to Orders). Closed Quotations are not included in this calculation, so marking Rejected Quotations as Closed will mean the result of the calculation will be inaccurate.
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The Quotation register in Standard ERP:
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