Quotes and purchase orders

Quotes price work the client must agree to before you start. Purchase orders track what you buy from suppliers and bill it on to the client.

Quotes

Billing › Quotes covers anything outside a client's plan: hardware, projects and out-of-scope fixes.

1. Create the quote against the client, with lines for parts and labour.
2. State the scope and what is excluded. Most disputes come from what was assumed, not what was written.
3. Give hardware quotes a validity date. Supplier prices change often.
4. Send it. The client gets an email and sees the quote in the portal under Approvals.

The client approves or declines in the portal. Each decision is timestamped against the person who made it, so there is no question later about what was agreed.

An accepted quote converts to a draft invoice in one step.

Expiry reminders

A sent quote that nobody has answered gets one reminder a set number of days before it lapses. The client gets an email, and the client's account manager gets a notification. If the client has no account manager, everyone who can edit billing is told. Set the number of days to 0 to turn this off.

Purchase orders

Billing › Purchase Orders follows hardware from supplier order to client invoice.

1. Create the purchase order against the supplier and the client it is for.
2. Add lines: description, SKU, quantity and unit cost. Costs are what you pay.
3. Check the client has an accepted quote that covers it, then send the order.
4. When the goods arrive, Receive them, fully or partly. Received hardware is added to the client's assets.
5. Bill client with markup to create a draft invoice at your sell price. Review it before you send it.

If only part of an order arrives, receive what came and leave the rest open. Do not close the order early.

Record serial numbers when you receive goods. It saves time on the first warranty claim.

Purchase orders that are received but not yet billed are also picked up by the monthly billing run.

Approvals

Approvals are not only for quotes. Your team can ask a client to approve a change before a technician goes ahead. The client sees it in the portal's approvals queue with the summary and the cost. Requests that nobody answers expire on their own.