How to raise a customer quote
A quote is where the money on a job starts. Sync numbers it, puts it on your letterhead, emails it to the right people and then waits for the customer's own purchase order. Record that PO and the project finally knows what it is worth, which is what the CVR and every invoice afterwards are reading.
- Where it lives
- Inside a project, under Financials, then Customer financials.
- What it produces
- A numbered quote, a PDF on your letterhead, and an email.
- What it feeds
- The contract value, the CVR and every invoice that follows.
- Who needs it
- Commercial and QS users, before anyone can invoice anything.
Before you start
A quote takes a couple of minutes once the groundwork is there. Check these first:
- The project exists, with the right customer on it.
- That customer has at least one contact against it.
- Your company details and logo are set, because they print on the quote.
- You know what you are pricing and at what rate.
Open Customer financials
Open the project, go to the Financials tab, then the Customer financials sub-tab. This is the customer-facing half of the money on a job. The trade partner side, what you are paying out, sits one tab across.
Four figures run along the top: contract value, invoiced, paid and outstanding, with a count of anything over 30 days. Below them are your quotes and the customer POs raised against them.
Start the quote
Press Raise Quote. The other button beside it, Raise standalone customer invoice, is for billing something that was never quoted, and is covered in the invoices guide.
There is no limit on quotes per project. A job that grows will often carry several.
Check the quote details
The left-hand panel is short, and most of it is already filled in.
Filled in from the project and not editable here. If it is wrong, the project is pointing at the wrong customer.
Generated for you in sequence, as QU-00011. You cannot set it yourself.
Required. Defaults to today and drives the expiry calculation.
Required, and defaults to 30. The default comes from your Account settings, so set it once there rather than changing it on every quote.
Add your line items
Press Add line item and a drawer opens on the right with three fields: description, quantity and unit price. The total calculates as you type. Save & Add line item commits it and leaves you ready for the next one.
This is worth knowing if you have used the trade partner purchase order screen, where lines are typed straight into the table and you can run down it on the keyboard. Quotes work the other way: one drawer per line.
Add a note and attachments
The Note field takes basic formatting and prints below the line items on the PDF. It is the right place for exclusions, assumptions and anything the price depends on.
Below it, Attach file takes your own documents. They ride along with the quote rather than replacing the generated PDF, so a drawing register or a scope document can go out with the price.
Save it as a draft
Two buttons sit at the bottom of the details panel. Save draft saves and returns you to Customer financials. Save and send saves and takes you to the quote record, ready to go on.
Neither of them emails anything. A quote saved either way is a Draft, and Draft is the only status where you can still change it. Use that: get the lines right before you issue it, because once issued it locks.
Review the email
From the quote record, press Preview and Send Quote. The right-hand side shows exactly what Sync will send: the subject line, a details block, and the body text.
The details block is assembled for you and includes the quote validity as a real date, so "30 days" is shown as the day it actually runs out. The project address and what3words appear here too where the project carries them.
[email protected]
Hi,
Please see attached quotation for the requested works.
Choose who it goes to
The Contacts dropdown lists two groups together: the contacts on the customer record, and the users on your own project team. Pick one and press Add contact. Repeat for anyone else who should see it.
Then set the primary contact. The email is addressed to the primary and everyone else is copied. For anyone not in either group, a client-side consultant say, switch to Add external contact and type the address.
Raise the quote
Raise Quote, top right, issues it. The email goes out with the quote attached as a PDF, the PDF is saved against the record, and the status moves from Draft to Quoted.
The PDF is built on your own letterhead: your logo, company name and address, registration and VAT numbers, and the payment terms held against that customer. All of that comes from your account settings rather than from anything typed on the quote, which is why it is worth getting right once.
Read the raised quote
An issued quote looks different from a draft. The details panel is greyed out, Update quote and Cancel quote are gone, and in their place are Regenerate PDF and Resend quote.
The line items table also gains two columns, Invoiced and Invoice. Each line tracks its own state and names the invoice it went onto, which is how a quote ends up Partially Invoiced rather than all or nothing.
Quotes sent outside Sync
Plenty of quotes go out some other way: as part of a tender return, through a client portal, or in a meeting. For those, use Mark as quoted on the row in Customer financials. It asks you to confirm, then moves the quote to Quoted without sending anything.
This matters more than it looks. Create invoice does not appear on a Draft quote, so a quote that was issued in real life but left as a draft in Sync will quietly block you at the point you try to bill it.
Record the customer PO
When the customer's purchase order arrives, press Add PO on the quote row. The drawer takes their reference, the amount, a date and the PO document itself.
Record what they actually sent. The PO amount is its own field and is allowed to differ from what you quoted, which happens often enough. You can also add more than one PO against the same quote where a customer releases the work in parts.
Watch the contract value
Saving the PO does two things that are easy to miss.
The quote moves to PO Received, and the Contract value card at the top of Customer financials stops saying "Manually entered" and starts showing the PO reference instead. The project now knows what it is worth, from the customer's own paperwork.
It carries through to the CVR as well. Customer value there changes from Manually entered to From customer orders, and the margin recalculates against it. Until a PO is recorded, both figures are only ever someone's estimate typed in by hand.
Move the project on
A won quote usually means the project is no longer at feasibility. Update project status on the quote record changes the project's status and requires a comment, which is posted into the project's Tasks and comments tab.
Doing it from here rather than from the project means the reason is recorded next to the thing that caused it.
Create the invoice
Create invoice on the quote row carries the quote through to a draft invoice with its line items already on it. You choose which lines to bill, which is what leaves a quote Partially Invoiced.
See every quote in one place
Quotes live on projects, but the customer record rolls them all up. Open the customer, then its Financials tab, and you get every quote, PO and invoice across all of that customer's jobs, with a total quoted and a total invoiced.
That view is read-only by design. As the app puts it, to change anything you click through to the project.
What each status means
Saved but not issued. Still fully editable, and the only status where you can change line items or cancel the quote outright.
Issued to the customer. The details lock, and Create invoice becomes available.
The customer has sent their own purchase order and you have recorded it. This is what sets the project contract value.
Some of the line items have been invoiced and some have not. Each line tracks its own invoiced state.
What you can and cannot do
- Raise as many quotes against one project as the job needs.
- Attach your own documents to a quote alongside the generated PDF.
- Send to a primary contact with others copied in, including people outside the customer record.
- Mark a quote as quoted without sending it, for quotes issued outside Sync.
- Record a customer PO whose value differs from the quote.
- Record more than one customer PO against the same quote.
- Invoice part of a quote and leave the rest for later.
- Move the project status from the quote, with a comment.
- Choose your own quote number. It is generated in sequence.
- Edit a quote once it has left Draft. Cancel it and raise another, or issue a variation.
- Raise a quote with no contact on it, or with contacts but none marked primary.
- Type line items straight into the table. Each one goes in through the Add line item drawer.
- Invoice a quote that is still in Draft. Create invoice does not appear until it is issued.
Common issues
They read "You must add at least one contact" and "You must select a primary contact". Add someone from the dropdown, press Add contact, then make sure the primary radio is selected against one of them.
It lists the customer’s contacts and the users on the project team. For anyone else, switch to Add external contact and type their address.
The quote is still in Draft. Either raise and send it, or use Mark as quoted if it went out some other way.
Record what they actually sent. The PO amount is its own field and is allowed to differ from the quote. The contract value follows the PO, not the quote.
No customer PO has been recorded yet. Until one is, both the contract value and the CVR customer value are whatever someone typed in by hand.
You cannot. Issued quotes lock so the record matches what the customer received. Raise a new quote, or put the change through as a variation on the CVR.
Good quote checklist
A quote that will not cause an argument later has:
- The customer on the project is the one you mean to bill.
- Line items describe the work in terms the customer will recognise.
- The expiry gives you long enough, and them long enough.
- Anything the quote depends on is in the note or attached.
- A primary contact is set, and the right people are copied.
- The customer PO is recorded as soon as it arrives, not at month end.
- The contract value now reads from that PO, not from a manual figure.
Summary
To quote a customer in Sync:
- 1Open the project, then Financials, then Customer financials.
- 2Press Raise Quote and check the generated number, date and expiry.
- 3Add each line through the Add line item drawer.
- 4Save it as a draft, then open Preview and Send Quote.
- 5Add a recipient, mark one primary, and press Raise Quote.
- 6Record the customer PO when it lands, which sets the contract value.
- 7Create the invoice from the quote when the work is ready to bill.
The quote is the smallest part of this. What matters is the purchase order you record against it, because that is the moment the job stops being an estimate and the CVR, the margin and every invoice start working from a real number.