Draft a quote from an email or a sentence

Paste what the customer sent, or type the job the way you’d say it, and the lines are laid out against your own stocks and presses. It never invents a price.

Draft it

1. On a draft quote, open Draft this quote at the top of the editor with Show.
2. Type or paste into the box. Your own shorthand works: “500 A5 flyers, 350gsm silk, double sided at £55, and 250 business cards”. So does the customer’s email, with what you want to charge added on the end.
3. Click Draft the quote. It takes 10 to 30 seconds, and the lines are added to the table below.

Nothing is priced for the customer until you have reviewed and saved. Nothing is emailed by the drafter; only the quote’s own Send button sends. The dashboard’s Start a quote card does the same thing from a standing start, customer and all.

Say what to change

Under the draft is a box for a change in words: “make it 170gsm and add gloss lam”. Click Refine and the whole draft is redone with just that change; lines you added by hand are left alone. Five refinements per draft, then edit the lines by hand or Start over.

What it tells you

• What was guessed — check before sending: every assumption it made, line by line. A weight the customer didn’t give, a size it inferred.
• What you’ve charged before: past prices for the same thing, with the quote they came from. For reference only; nothing is set from them.
• You asked for these and they aren’t in the draft: things it can’t do, like a discount or a second quantity of the same item, so you add them by hand.
• Set on the quote: quote settings it filled in from the enquiry, such as free delivery or the payment rule. Anything you’d already set is left as you had it.

All of this is written into the quote’s Internal notes as well, so it’s still there after the panel is closed. If a customer has had the same job before, the drafter offers the past quote with Copy its lines, at their old prices, marked to check.

Where the price comes from

If you state a price (“at £55”, “15 each”) it goes on the line as given. A figure inside a pasted customer email is never used as a price. Otherwise a custom line’s price is left blank for you, and a line matched to your catalogue is worked out from your own costs at your mark-up. If no mark-up is set anywhere, the draft says so: the line is at cost until you set one.