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Make sales quotes

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You create a sales quote to record your offer to a customer or a prospect to sell certain products on certain delivery and payment terms. You can send the sales quote to the customer to communicate the offer. You can email the document as a PDF attachment. You can also have the email body prefilled with a summary of the quote. For more information, see Send Documents by Email.

While you negotiate with the customer or prospect, you can change and resend the sales quote as much as needed. When the customer accepts the quote, you convert the sales quote to a sales invoice or a sales order in which you process the sale. For more information, see Invoice Sales or Sell Products.

In most cases, you send sales quotes to prospective customers. You often have a contact person that you negotiate with. If they then accept your offer, you turn the sales quote into an order and register the prospect as a customer in Business Central. In the following procedure, we focus on contacts, but you can also send quotes to existing customers.

To create a sales quote

  1. Choose the Lightbulb that opens the Tell Me feature. icon, enter Sales Quotes, and then choose the related link.

  2. Specify the contact or customer that you want to send the sales quote to.

    • If the sales quote is for an existing contact, then specify the name in the Contact No. field.

      If the sales quote is for an existing customer, specify the customer in the Customer field.

    • If the contact isn't registered, follow these steps:

      1. In the Contact No. field, choose the edit button .
      2. In the dialog box about selecting the contact, choose the New action, and then fill in the relevant fields. Hover over a field to read a short description. For more information, see Create Contacts.
      3. When you have completed the contact card, select the newly created contact in the list of contacts, and then choose the OK button to return to the sales quote.

      Several fields on the sales quote are now filled with information that you specified on the new contact card.

      Note

      To correctly calculate taxes and prices for a quote, you must choose the relevant customer template in the Customer Template Code field. The template will be used to convert the contact to a customer once the quote is converted to a sales order or invoice.

    • If the quote is for new customer, you must add the customer. For more information, see Register New Customers.

  3. Fill in the remaining fields on the Sales Quote page as necessary. Hover over a field to read a short description.

    You're now ready to fill in the sales lines for products that you're selling or for any transaction with the customer or prospect that you want to record in a G/L account.

    If you have set up recurring sales lines for the customer, such as a monthly replenishment order, then you can insert these lines on the order by choosing the Get Recurring Sales Lines action.

  4. On the Lines FastTab, in the Type field, select what type of product, charge, or transaction that you'll post for the customer with the sales line.

  5. In the No. field, select a record to post according to the value in the Type field.

    You leave the No. field empty in the following cases:

    • If the line is for a comment. Write the comment in the Description field.
    • If the line is for a catalog item. Choose the Select Catalog Items action. For more information, see Work With Catalog Items.

  6. In the Quantity field, enter how many units of the product, charge, or transaction that the line will record for the customer.

    Note

    If the item is of type Service, or the Type field contains Resource, then the quantity is a time unit, such as hours, as indicated in the Unit of Measure Code field on the line. For more information, see Set Up Item Units of Measure

    The value in the Line Amount field is calculated as Unit Price x Quantity.

    The price and line amounts are with or without sales tax, depending on what you selected in the Prices Including Tax field on the customer card.

  7. If you want to give a discount, enter a percentage in the Line Discount % field. The value in the Line Amount field updates accordingly.

    If special item prices are set up on the Sales Prices and Sales Line Discounts FastTab on the customer or item card, the price and amount on the sales line automatically update if the price criteria is met. For more information, see Record Sales Price, Discount, and Payment Agreements.

  8. Repeat steps 4 through 7 for every product you want to offer the contact.

    The totals under the lines are automatically calculated as you create or modify lines.

  9. In the Inv. Discount Amount field, enter an amount that should be deducted from the value shown in the Total Incl. Tax field.

    If you have set up invoice discounts for the customer, then the specified percentage value is automatically inserted in the Invoice Discount % field if the criteria are met, and the related amount is inserted in the Inv. Discount Amount Excl. Tax field. For more information, see Record Sales Price, Discount, and Payment Agreements.

    Tip

    To have the Quote Valid Until Date filled in automatically with a certain number of days after quote creation, you can fill in the Quote Validity Calculation field on the Sales & Receivables page.

  10. When the sales quote lines are completed, choose the Send by Email action.

  11. On the Send Email page, fill in any remaining fields and review the embedded sales quote. For more information, see Send Documents by Email.

  12. If the contact accepts the quote, choose the Make Order action.

    Alternatively, if your organization prefers that process, choose the Make Invoice action.

    Note

    If you added a customer in step 2, you'll be asked to confirm the conversion of the quote to an order.

    If you added a contact from a prospective customer in step 2, you'll be asked to take the following steps:

The conversion removes the sales quote from the database. A sales invoice or a sales order is created based on the information in the sales quote so that you can process the sale. In the Quote No. field on the sales invoice or sales order, you can see the number of the sales quote that it was made from. For more information, see Invoice Sales or Sell Products.

External document number

On sales documents and journals, you can specify a document number that refers to the customer's numbering system. Use this field to record the number that the customer assigned to the order, invoice, or credit memo. You can then use the number later if, for some reason, you need to search for the posted entry using this number.

The Ext. Doc. No. Mandatory field on the Sales & Receivables Setup page specifies whether it is mandatory to enter an external document number in the External Document No. field on a sales header and the External Document No. field on a general journal line.

If you select this field, it will not be possible to post an invoice or a general journal line without an external document number.

The external document number is included in posted documents where you can search by the relevant number. You can also search using the external document number when navigating on customer ledger entries.

A different way to handle external document numbers is to use the Your Reference field. If you use the Your Reference field, the number will be included in posted documents, and you can search by it in the same way as for values from External Document No. fields. But the field is not available on journal lines.

See also

Sales
Setting Up Sales
Send Documents by Email
Archive Documents
Work with Business Central

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