Creating a Quote

When to use New Quote

New Quote is for the pre-sale stage: the customer is asking "how much?" and you haven't received a PO yet. If the price is already settled and a PO is on its way, use Creating a Direct Order instead — it skips the quote-to-order round trip.

Step 1: Find the Quotations list

From the main menu: Plating → Sales → Quotations.

What you see:

• Box ① — + New button, top-left. Opens the quote-building wizard.
• Box ② — Email Status and Status columns, showing whether the customer has opened the email and whether the quote is still live / accepted / expired.
• Box ③ — clickable row. Tap any existing quote to open and edit it, send a revision, or convert it.

Step 2: Email status values (box ②)

The column can read:

Use the filter dropdown at the top of the list to narrow by status — typical daily view is "Draft or Sent, not mine, oldest first" to see what needs follow-up.

Step 3: Start a new quote

Click + New (box ①). The quote configurator opens. You fill it in three stages: Customer → Part + Coating → Price.

Customer + contact

• Customer — start typing the customer name. Once picked, the bill-to and ship-to addresses auto-fill from their record.
• Contact — pick the specific person at the customer this quote is for. Defaults to their primary sales contact.

Part + coating

• Part — pre-filtered to this customer's catalog. If the part isn't there yet, save the quote as draft, add the part via Plating → Sales → Part Catalog → New, then come back and pick it.
• Coating Configuration — picks the recipe and the pricing method. Auto-populates from the part's default coating if one is set.
• Quantity — integer.

Price

The system computes a price from the Pricing Rule attached to the coating:

• Surface-area × rate, OR
• Per-piece flat rate, OR
• Hour-based with estimated dwell time

You can override the calculated figure — there's a Final Price field that always wins over Calculated Price. Put the number you want to send to the customer in Final Price; the calculation is visible for reference and any price-list discrepancies show up in the QA flag.

Click Save & Convert to Quote. The record now appears in the Quotations list as state = Draft.

Step 4: Send to the customer

Open the quote (box ③ in the list). At the top of the form, click the Send button.

A compose dialog opens with:

• The FP: Quotation Sent template pre-selected.
• The Sales Order PDF attached automatically (titled "Quotation" while the SO state is draft/sent).
• The customer contact's email in the To field.

Edit the message body if you want, then click Send inside the dialog. Cancel discards without sending — the email only fires when you click Send.

Status becomes Sent in the list.

Step 5: Follow up

Three signals tell you the quote's next action:

Step 6: Convert to a confirmed order

When the customer accepts — replies with a PO, signs, or verbally confirms — open the quote and use Confirm. Status flips to Order Received, the quote graduates from the Quotations list into Sale Orders, and manufacturing orders are auto-created from the lines.

If the customer sent a PO document, attach it on the SO form after confirming (the PO field is on the Sales Order, not on the Quotation).

What can go wrong

Calculated Price is zero

The coating's pricing rule didn't produce a value. Usually because surface area is 0 on the part, or the rule references a field that's empty. Open the coating config → Pricing Rule tab → check the formula.

Customer isn't getting the email

Check Settings → Technical → Email → Outgoing Mail Servers. If SMTP is down, email queues. Also check the customer's Opt-out flag on their contact record — sometimes someone set it months ago and forgot.

"Send" is greyed out

The customer contact on the quote has no email. Either fix the contact record or pick a different contact.

Status stays "Draft" even after I sent it

You may have hit Cancel in the compose dialog. Open the quote, click Send again, and this time use the Send button inside the dialog — not Cancel.