Quotations: quote, approve, convert
Quote a customer, get it approved, and turn the approved quote into a production job.
Quotations are the paper trail for work you price before you print. A quote goes to a customer, gets approved, and becomes a production job — with the numbers you quoted preserved so you can compare them against what the job actually cost.
Note
Quotations are a paid feature. On the Free plan the sidebar entry shows a padlock — see Plans and limits. Counter work is always available through the production floor.
Start with the customer
A quotation must belong to a customer, so add them in Customers first — company name at minimum, plus contact details and an address if you will be delivering.
Raising a quotation
- 1Go to Quotations and start a new one.
- 2Choose the customer.
- 3Add a line per product, with a quantity. The unit price defaults to the product's selling price and can be overridden per line — this is where a negotiated rate goes.
- 4Save. The quote gets a reference of the form
Q2026-0001and starts as a Draft.
Check the margin before you send
Open each product's page to see its material cost. Discounting a line is easy; discounting it below cost is just as easy. Cost, price and margin explains the figures.
The lifecycle
| Status | Meaning | What you can do |
|---|---|---|
| Draft | Being prepared | Edit, send, approve |
| Sent | With the customer | Approve, reject |
| Approved | Customer said yes | Convert to a job |
| Rejected | Customer said no | Kept for the record |
| Converted | A production job exists | Follow the job |
Only a Draft or Sent quote can be approved, and only an Approved quote can be converted. The order is enforced so a quote cannot become a job without someone having agreed to it.
Converting to a job
Convert asks which machine each line should run on — the same choice the production floor asks for — then creates a production job at *Queued*, numbered JOB2026-0001, and marks the quote Converted.
From there it is an ordinary job: start it, log any waste, mark it done. Because it has a customer, finishing it opens a delivery automatically.
Why product names are frozen onto the quote
The product name is copied onto each line when the quote is created, not looked up later. Rename or retire a product a year from now and the old quote still reads exactly as the customer received it. The same is true of job lines.
Can I edit an approved quote?
Approve is meant to be the point of agreement. If something changed, raise a new quotation — it keeps the history of what was actually agreed.
Can one quote produce several jobs?
No — converting produces one job with all the lines. Split the work into separate quotes if it needs separate jobs.
Does a quote reserve stock?
No. Stock moves when the job is finished, not when the work is quoted.
Open Quotations
Related guides
Running a production job
Start to finish: starting a job, watching progress, logging errors, and marking it done.
Cost, price and margin on a product
How the product page works out unit cost from the recipe, and what the margin figure means.
Packing, dispatching and delivering
The delivery lifecycle that opens automatically when a customer job is completed.