Creating a quotation

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Please note that since Financial documents are created in the same way, Quotations will be looked at in detail and used as a generic example.

The cohesive nature of BigChange allows you to produce Quotations in Sales Opportunities and later assign them to a job once the Quotation is accepted.

You can see at a glance which Quotations have not yet had a response and which have been either rejected or accepted. 

You can also add Alerts which notify you when a Quotation has been accepted or rejected, or when a deadline is reached. If you would like to add your logo to your Financial documents, this can be done as follows:

• Navigate to:[Top menu]Profile (icon) → Admin Settings → [Quick links] General Account Settings → Account Details 

and add a URL of the desired quality and dimensions in the relevant field shown below: 

Back Office

Before quotations can be created, the person creating them needs to be given the relevant permissions in the back office. 

• Navigate to:[Top menu]Profile (icon) → Admin Settings → [side menu] → Web Users → Roles → [type]Financial:

 Whilst still in the back office:

• Navigate to:[Top menu]Profile (icon) → Admin Settings → (1)[side menu] → Financial → (2) Financial Documents and Sales Opportunities → (3) Quotation:

Clicking on 'Quotation' will open a new popup with 2 options:

1. Automatic Reference
2. Edit

Automatic Referencing

This feature allows you to set up referencing according to your personal preference, using Excel-style number formatting.

The 'Reference prefix' field allows you to use appropriate category prefixes to enable simple sorting and searching, eg QUO/ for Quotations, PO/ for Purchase Orders, etc.

The 'Format' field allows you to set a default reference number format, eg to force a reference with 5 digits, type '00000' into the format box, or if you want to use dashes to separate thousands, type '000-000' into the box. You could also insert specific characters between numbers if desired, for example, '000/000'.

Finally, the 'Next number' field allows you to set the starting number for the sequence to ensure that it does not repeat any numbers which may have been previously used.

Edit

Clicking Edit will open a new window. Detail Tab By default, it opens displaying the Detail tab which allows you to select your default template for the area of Finance you are working on - in this case, a quotation. 

When you have selected your desired Template, click to Save.

Notes to Client Tab

The Notes to Client function acts as a useful shortcut, eliminating the need to repeatedly type in the same information. 

This is particularly useful in areas where extensive and accurate detail is required, for example, Terms & Conditions or Warranty information.

Notes to Client are set up in the back office so begin by:

• Navigate to:[Top menu]Profile (icon) → Admin Settings → [side menu] → Financial → Financial documents & Sales opps. 

Select the type of document and then click Edit, followed by the Notes to Client tab You can now edit existing notes or Click '+Add' to create a new one:

1. New Label - this field acts as an abbreviation of the full text so choose something which is immediately identifiable eg Warranty or Quotation.  The customer does not see this label.
2. Notes to Client - this is the full body of the text which you wish to appear in your correspondence to the Contact.

Once the back office step has been completed, the feature is ready to use. Whenever you create or edit a Financial Document and you reach the field 'Note to Client', at the bottom right of it you will see 'Select a note'. 

Click on this and a dropdown menu will appear showing the labels you have created.  Clicking on the desired label will populate the 'Note to Client' field with the body text you added against that label. Once the text has been added an 'i' will appear on the right-hand side.  Hovering over the 'i' will display the text.

Quote Acceptance Tab

Clicking on the Quote Acceptance tab opens the Acceptance page by default and allows you to customise how your response buttons will look on your customer document/email. 

An example is shown below: 

Similarly, clicking across to the Acceptance Capture & Receipt page will look and allows you to customise it by adding your preferred template, button text and Custom Fields.

Will result in a customer email Acceptance Link which looks like this:

See the full Quote Acceptance article for further details

Custom Fields

Before leaving the back office, if there are any Custom Fields which you would like to create, this can be done by

• Navigate to:[Top menu]Profile (icon) → Admin Settings → [side menu] →Financial documents' custom fields

and then selecting the Document type:

You will then see a popup window in which you can add the desired detail, including  whether or not you wish this field to be mandatory eg:

Where you do confirm a mandatory answer, a conditional field will appear which asks if you require a specific yes/no answer or whether any answer is acceptable.  If a specific response is required then it will force the respondent to give that answer before proceeding:

Front End

Once the Back End sections are completed, it is time to move to the Front End.

Quotations can be created anywhere in the system where a line item can be added, as Quotations have to be created against line items.  A line item for BigChange purposes, may be termed as anything which has a cost price, a selling price, or both. 

This could be an item of stock or equipment, a service, travel costs, plant hire, etc. 

• Please note, this does not prohibit zero value line items from being included in some document types.

Quotations can be created in a number of places: CRM Financial Documents, Sales Opportunities, Contacts, against a Job or against a Group of Jobs.

If we use Sales Opportunities as an example:

• Navigate to:CRM → [side menu] Sales opportunities → Edit → [tab] Documents → [icon] Add+:

Now simply tick the checkbox against Quotation and proceed to complete:

1. Click to add a financial line item either: manually freehand; through a predefined item which has been set up in the back office ([Top menu] Profile (icon) → Admin Settings → [side menu] Financial → Predefined invoicing item); or as an item of stock or equipment which has been added in the back office (Stock & Equipment → [icon] Add stock or equipment).
2. If you click on the 3 line menu (burger) icon, it will open a menu that allows you to 'Move up', Move down', 'Discount/Markup' or 'Delete' line items.
3. Ticking one or more of these boxes will add a conditional field icon 'Selected items'. Clicking on this will give you the popup options 'Discount/Markup' and 'Delete'. Whilst the 3 line menu (outlined in red below) allows you to simply make these changes for all line items, the 'Selected items' icon (outlined in blue below) allows you to do this for individual items on this document: 
4. When applying a discount/markup to an individual line item, the cost price, original selling price and selling price with added discount/markup, is shown to the user and amends in real-time. If multiple lines are selected, the first line is shown. Text explaining what the discount/markup is applied to is also displayed on the screen.
5. 
6. Change the quantity if required.
7. Depending on which financial package you are using, what you will see here will differ.  You may see a Nominal code, a Department Code or both.  Enter the department code, usually used in Sage. If Department codes have been set up in the back office ([Top menu] Profile (icon) → Admin Settings → [side menu] Financial → Department codes) then they will appear as dropdown options once you begin to type. Please note that fields 3 & 4 only appear where some options have been set up in the back office. Please note that if you have created a Nominal Code it will appear as a column between 4 and 5.
8. Enter a description of the financial line item if you have selected the 'Add item' option (otherwise it will have auto-populated).
9. Enter the cost of the financial line item if you have selected the 'Add item' option (otherwise it will have auto-populated).
10. Enter the selling price of the line item if you have selected the 'Add item' option (otherwise it will have auto-populated).
11. Enter the VAT code. The dropdown list will only be viewable if VAT codes have been set up ([Top menu] Profile (icon) → Admin Settings →[side menu] Financial → VAT codes). If you have not set up VAT codes, a text box will be displayed in which you can type in the VAT percentage.
12. The VAT amount is automatically calculated.
13. The gross amount is automatically calculated.
14. Clicking on this allows you to Sort the line items into a specific order by adding one or two parameters
15. 
16. Add the Contact name. Depending upon where you are in the system when you create the Quotation, this may have auto-populated.
17. Select the document type - for our purposes here, select 'Quotation'.

This sets how long the quote is valid.  If the date has passed, a red banner will appear at the top of the Financial document giving the expiry date and time and in the list view it will appear in red:

Once the date has expired, should you wish to you can reinstate it by changing the number of days in the 'Quote valid for' field and once saved, the red banner will disappear. To set the general default period for Quotation validity:

• Navigate to: [Top menu]Profile (icon) → Admin Settings → [side menu] → Account → Account settings → [section] Financial → Default validity of quotes 

and add the required number of days:

Should you wish to set up a different validity period for a specific customer, this can be done by:

• Navigate to:CRM → [side menu] Contact → select Contact → [tab] Financial → [tab sub menu] Terms:

And click to Save. 

It is also worth mentioning the 'Attachments' and 'Activity' tabs:

The Attachments tab is for images, documents and videos relating to this document eg an email or a Purchase Order:

The Activity Tab displays a list view of all the document's related activities, together with a date/time stamp:

Creating a Financial Document Against Group Jobs

If you would like to create a Financial Document against a group of Jobs, this can be very simply achieved by: 

• Navigate to:Schedule → select Job Group → View → [tab] Financial  → [icon] Create financial document:

 You can now proceed as above.