Welcome to the NZRT Wiki Podcast. Today we’re looking at Commercial Proposals (Quotes).

If you’ve ever needed to send a client a formal price breakdown before they commit to anything, you’re working with what NZRT calls a Commercial Proposal, or simply a Quote. These are professional PDF documents that give your customer a clear picture of what you’re offering, what it costs, and what they’re agreeing to. And the good news is they’re built to do a lot of the heavy lifting for you, from calculation through to signature and straight into an order, all without having to re-enter the same information twice.

Let’s start with the overall journey a quote takes from the moment you create it. It begins in a draft state. That’s your working space where you’re pulling things together, adding line items, adjusting figures, and making sure everything looks right before anyone outside the business sees it. Once you’re happy with it internally, it moves to validated. Think of that as your internal sign-off, a checkpoint that says this document is ready to go out the door. After that, it gets sent to the customer. From there, the customer can actually sign it online, which we’ll talk about in a moment. And once signed or approved, you can convert it directly into a Customer Order without starting from scratch. So the flow goes from draft, to validated, to sent, to optionally signed online, and finally converted into an order.

Now let’s talk about what actually goes inside one of these quotes. The line items, meaning the individual products or services you’re quoting for, are pulled directly from your catalogue. That means you’re not typing descriptions or prices from memory. You select what you need, and the system brings in the details for you. On top of that, you have full control over discounts, tax, and margin calculations. So if you need to apply a ten percent discount to a particular item, or you want to check whether your margin on a service is healthy before you send the quote out, all of that is handled right there in the quote itself. You can see your numbers clearly and adjust them before anything goes to the client.

When it comes to actually generating the document the customer receives, you have multiple PDF templates to choose from. This matters because different clients or different types of engagements might call for different formats. One template might be more formal and detailed, while another is simpler and more suitable for a quick engagement. You pick the one that fits the situation, and the system generates a professional PDF ready to send.

One of the more powerful features here is the online signing link. When you send a quote, you can include a link that allows the customer to review and e-sign the document directly in their browser. There’s no printing, scanning, or emailing back required. The customer clicks the link, reviews the quote, and adds their signature electronically. This speeds things up significantly, especially when you’re working with clients who aren’t in the same location or time zone. Once they’ve signed, that status is reflected in the system and you can move forward with converting to an order.

Speaking of which, that conversion step is worth highlighting. Because everything in the quote, your line items, pricing, discounts, customer details, flows directly into the resulting Customer Order, you’re not doing double data entry. It’s a clean handoff from the proposal stage to the fulfilment stage.

There’s also version history built in, which is easy to overlook but genuinely useful. If a quote goes through several rounds of revision, perhaps a client asks you to adjust scope or pricing, you have a record of what changed and when. That kind of audit trail is helpful both for your own records and for any disputes or questions that might come up later.

Finally, it’s worth knowing how quotes connect to the rest of the system. They sit naturally alongside Customer Orders, since that’s where a signed quote ends up. They also tie into the Margins module, so your profitability analysis stays connected to what you’re actually quoting. And if you’re tracking opportunities and leads, quotes are often the next step after a lead progresses, giving you a clear line from initial interest all the way through to a signed commitment.

That’s it for this episode of the NZRT Wiki Podcast. Thanks for listening.