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A quotation (or quote) is the priced offer you send a customer before any sale is committed. It carries no accounting effect on its own — nothing posts to your ledger — but it is the front door to a sale: once the customer accepts, you convert the quote into a real sales invoice in one step, carrying the lines, prices, and terms across. This page covers building a quote, its validity window, the statuses it moves through, sending and tracking it, and converting an accepted quote into an invoice. You’ll find this at: /accounting/quotations
📷 Screenshot: Quotations list page with the pipeline stats and “New Quotation” button — to be added.

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When to use a quotation

Use a quotation when you want to give a customer a formal price offer they can accept or decline, especially when:
  • The deal is still being negotiated (you may revise the offer).
  • You want to offer discounts (quotations support both per-line and document-level discounts, unlike the sales invoice).
  • You want to present alternative options the customer chooses between.
  • The offer is only valid for a limited time.
Because a quote never touches the ledger, you can create, revise, and discard them freely without any accounting clean-up.

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The quotation lifecycle (statuses)

📷 Screenshot: Quotation detail page showing the status badge and the action buttons (Submit, Approve, Send, Accept, Convert) — to be added.

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Creating a quotation

From the Quotations list, choose New Quotation (this opens the dedicated builder at /accounting/quotations/new).
📷 Screenshot: New quotation builder with the line editor, alternatives toggle, and totals panel — to be added.

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Header fields

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Line items

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How a line is priced

For each line the system works out:
  1. Gross = quantity × unit price
  2. Less the line’s percentage discount, then the flat discount amount → net
  3. Tax = net × (tax rate ÷ 100)
  4. Line total = net + tax

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Document totals

  • Subtotal = the net (pre-tax) value of all non-alternative lines
  • Tax = total tax across non-alternative lines
  • Document discount = subtotal × (document discount % ÷ 100)
  • Total = subtotal − document discount + tax
Alternative lines (options the customer chooses between) are excluded from the headline totals so you don’t double-count competing options. They are priced and stored, and become real lines only when one is selected at conversion time.

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Offering alternatives

When you want the customer to pick between options (say, two grades of the same product), mark the competing lines as alternatives and give them the same alternative group index. Only the selected alternative is pulled into the invoice when you convert; the rest are left behind.

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Editing, submitting, and approval

  • Editing: Only Draft quotations can be edited or deleted. Once a quote moves beyond Draft it is locked — use Revise to make changes (see below).
  • Submit: Moves a Draft to Pending Approval. A quote must have at least one line item before it can be submitted.
  • Approve / Reject: An internal approver moves a Pending-Approval quote to Approved, or Rejects it back to Draft for rework.

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Sending to the customer

Choose Send on an Approved quotation. This:
  • Marks the quote Sent and stamps the send time.
  • Emails the quotation PDF to the customer’s email address. If the contact has no email, the quote is still marked Sent — only the email delivery is skipped.
You can Resend the email for quotes that are Sent, Accepted, or Partially Converted.

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After it’s sent

Once the customer responds, record the outcome:
  • Accept — moves a Sent quote to Accepted, ready to convert. If the quote has a valid-until date that has already passed, acceptance is blocked with a message telling you to resend or recreate it first.
  • Mark Lost — moves a Sent quote to Lost. You record a lost reason (and optional notes) so you can analyse why deals don’t close.
  • Revise — for a Sent quote, creates a brand-new Draft copy (new quotation number) and marks the original Revised. Use this to send an updated offer without losing the history of the original.
  • Reopen — for an Expired or Lost quote, spins up a fresh Draft copy so you can re-quote.

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Expiry

Each night the system automatically marks any quote whose valid-until date has passed (and that hasn’t been accepted/converted) as Expired, keeping your open pipeline honest.

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Converting a quote into an invoice

When the customer has accepted, choose Convert to invoice (available on Accepted and Partially Converted quotes).
📷 Screenshot: Convert-to-invoice wizard showing line selection, quantities, and alternative picks — to be added.
In the conversion wizard you can:
  • Choose which alternative to include for each alternative group (omit a group to drop all its options).
  • Select specific lines and quantities to invoice now — handy for partial billing. Omit selections to convert everything remaining.
The system then:
  1. Creates a Draft sales invoice for the same customer, carrying the chosen lines, unit prices, tax rates, item links, and the quote’s notes and terms. The invoice is dated today with a due date 30 days out by default. (Stock-item lines carry the item’s default income account.)
  2. Tracks how much of each line has been converted, so a partial conversion leaves the rest available.
  3. Sets the quote to Converted (everything billed) or Partially Converted (more to bill).
  4. Records a link between the quote and the new invoice so you can trace one to the other.
You cannot over-convert: the wizard won’t let you invoice more of a line than remains unconverted.
The new document lands as a Draft invoice — review it, then submit and send it through the normal invoice flow to actually bill the customer and post to the ledger.

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Quotations from CRM opportunities

There is a path to spin a quotation directly off a CRM opportunity.
⚠️ Current state: This is temporarily unavailable while the CRM module is being rebuilt — attempting it returns a “CRM module is being rebuilt” message. Create the quotation manually for now. (Flagged for the team — see Gaps.)

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Behind the scenes — the accounting

None. A quotation is a pre-sale offer and posts nothing to your general ledger at any status — not when created, sent, accepted, or expired. The accounting effect only begins when you convert the quote to a sales invoice and then send that invoice. See Sales Invoices for the journal entries that follow.

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Multi-business note

Quotations belong to a specific accounting book. If your organisation runs several businesses or books, make sure the workspace selector shows the right one before you create or convert — a quote converts into an invoice in the same book, so it must match the business you intend to bill from.