The Estimates page
At the top, a banner shows your own limits: how much you can send without approval, how much you can approve, and your biggest discount. The tabs are All estimates, Mine and the Approval queue.
An estimate is Draft, Needs approval or Sent.
Build an estimate
- Press New estimate and pick the customer (open leads only).
- Type the square feet, or measure the property.
- Pick the service from your price list. Hot mix asks for the thickness in inches.
- The standard price fills in. You can change the charged price, and give a discount if you are allowed to.
- Add extras. A suggested add-on can be included; it isn't counted in the total.
The totals show the subtotal (with mobilization), the discount, the tax, the total, the price range sent to the customer and the hot mix tons. If the job comes in under your minimum job price, a line brings it up to the minimum. See Services and pricing.
A line whose price you changed says "Needs approval: not the standard price". A line typed by hand has no standard price, so it always needs approval.
A draft for small jobs
When Tier 3 (residential and small jobs) on the Tiers card of Automations is set to "Auto-estimate a draft for review" instead of the decline template, pushing a sized Tier 3 lead builds a draft estimate from your price list, and your Tier 2 estimator gets a task to check and send it. It is never sent by itself: sending stays a person's decision, under their own limit and the approval rule. Out-of-area leads are still declined.
When a quote needs approval
A quote can be sent straight away unless one of these is true:
- Its total is over the sender's sending limit.
- Any line isn't at the standard price.
- It has any discount.
Then the button says Request approval instead of Save and send. The database refuses to mark such a quote sent. A discount above your own discount limit is refused outright. The owner never needs approval for their own quotes.
Editing an approved quote clears the approval.
Approving
Asking for approval gives a task to every manager whose approval limit covers the quote, due in 24 hours. The owner is asked only when no manager's limit is high enough.
The approver opens the quote from the Approval queue and sees the total, the discount, the range, who built it, who asked, their own limit, and exactly which prices were changed and by how much. Then Approve, or Approve and text customer.
- Nobody approves their own estimate, or one they asked someone else to approve.
- Nobody approves above their approval limit.
After approval, the person who asked gets a task to send it.
Sending
Send emails the proposal with its PDF attached (when there is an email address) and sends an "Estimate ready" text, only with texting consent and only while Text estimates automatically when they are sent is ticked under Pricing defaults on Settings (it is, in a new company). The lead moves to Approved. Sending the same unchanged quote again sends nothing, and the app tells you; a quote that changed after it went out is sent again, with a new link.
Download PDF gives the estimate, and Download proposal PDF gives a cover letter plus the estimate, both branded with the lead's brand. Neither carries a link: the PDF says to sign online with the link in the email or text it came with.
The customer's quote page
The email and the text carry a private link to the customer's own quote page: your brand and phone, the work, the totals, the terms and the PDF. The background worker makes the link at the moment the message leaves, so it never sits in a stored letter where someone could copy it out. The customer has two choices:
- Accept and sign: they type their full name, tick "I agree to this estimate and its terms" and press Sign estimate. Their name, the time, their address and browser are kept with that exact version of the estimate, and a signed estimate and its signature can never be changed. The lead moves to Accepted and the handoff starts on its own (see Paperwork and the handoff); if something stops the move, the lead's owner is told what is missing.
- Decline this estimate, with an optional reason. The lead's owner gets a task to follow up.
The link shows one version of the estimate, the one it was sent with, and the database refuses an answer to any other. It stops working once the customer has answered ("This link has done its job"), when the estimate changes, when the lead is lost or canceled, and after 180 days. On the Estimates page you see "Viewed by the customer on ..." with how many times, then "Signed by ... on ..." or "Declined on ...", and a warning if a signed estimate is edited afterwards: "The estimate no longer matches what was signed." Opening your own link from the office doesn't count as a view.
Quote terms
The terms on the quote page and in the estimate PDF are your company's own, written on the Quote terms card of Settings, for the whole company or per brand. Every signature keeps the exact words the customer agreed to. Changing the terms retires the quote links already out with customers, and the page says which estimates to send again.