For those of you who have to prepare quotes for your clients it's certainly worthwhile checking out how to do these in Xero.
They not only look professional, but it saves you a tonne of time when preparing and you can then turn them into Invoices.
Let's take a look...
Preparing a Quote
Quotes are found under the Sales area and follow the same structure as a normal invoice in Xero with a few extra features.
To prepare a quote you simple click Quote from the drop down menu as shown above. Just like preparing an invoice you can select an existing customer, enter the date and chose the theme of the Quote.
You can also select an Expiry Date and add a Title and Summary to the quote. This allows you to add as much detail as you would like.
We always suggest having Items setup in Xero so you can quickly populate the services or products you are supplying. This means a lot less typing of the description each time as well as the price and account pre-populate.
You can set your terms as well so everyone is on the same page and this is consistent for all of your customers.
You can add files to the Quote if you need to add any drawings or requests etc.
The last step is to hit the send button. As always you can set the email template so you don't have to type anything in before you send to the customer.
Customer Accepts
Your customer gets a professional looking proposal straight into their inbox. They click a link and can accept the proposal with 1 click. They can also decline or comment if something needs changing.
Once accepted it moves along in the workflow process in Xero.
The Quotes Dashboard
As soon as you start preparing quotes you can easily see where everything is up to by looking at the Quotes Dashboard. You can see how many and the dollar value of Quotes that are waiting on your customer to accept. You can see how many have accepted and not been invoiced yet as well as Quotes that are due to expire so you can give the customer a final nudge.
You can easily bulk send quotes again, copy to another quote and of course invoice
Turning a Quote to an Invoice
The best part about using quotes is that you only need to click 1 button (Create Invoice) and all the detail you put in the quote is automatically transferred to an invoice. All you need to do is click Approve and then send the invoice to your customer.
No typing the customers name, no finding the quote to see how much you are charging, no typing in any descriptions. It's all included for you.
Quotes are a fantastic tool to use in Xero. They not only look professional, they allow you to prepare and move your customers through the process from quote to acceptance faster and easier.
Oh and of course they help you save a tonne of admin time #bandamin :)