Quoting tools

If your team quotes in Quoter, Salesbuildr, or QuoteWerks, you can keep doing so. When a quote is won there, Outpost brings it in as an external quote and converts it as if it had been accepted in Outpost: the client, the agreement, the sales order, and the onboarding ticket. This page covers connecting a quoting tool, mapping its accounts and products, and the review queue.

Before you begin

• You are on the MSP plan.

• Adding and changing connectors needs crm:approve. Mapping accounts and products, and importing or ignoring quotes, needs crm:write.

• An API credential from the quoting tool:

  Tool	Credentials
  Quoter	The Client ID and Client secret of a Quoter API key.
  Salesbuildr	A Salesbuildr API key.
  QuoteWerks	An API key, or a User name and Password, and the Server address of your QuoteWerks Web server, starting https://. An API key is used when both are given.

Add a connector

1. Select Sales > Quoting tools, then Add connector.
2. Choose the Vendor, and enter a Name for the connector.
3. Under Credentials, enter what the tool gave you.
4. Leave Enabled: poll the vendor and accept its webhooks selected.
5. Select Add connector.
6. Open the connector and select Test.

Outpost checks each enabled connector every 15 minutes. Its first check looks back 30 days. Select Poll now to check at once.

Set up the webhook

Quoter and Salesbuildr can tell Outpost the moment a quote changes, instead of waiting for the next check. QuoteWerks has no webhook, and its connector says Not used. QuoteWerks is checked every 15 minutes.

1. On the connector, select Set up webhook.
2. Copy the Webhook address and Secret. They are not shown again.
3. In the quoting tool, add a webhook to that address:
   • Quoter: paste the secret as the webhook Hash Key.
   • Salesbuildr: add the secret as the custom header X-Outpost-Webhook-Secret.
4. Select I have copied it.

Rotate webhook makes a new address and secret, and the old ones stop working. Outpost treats every webhook as a hint and reads the quote from the quoting tool itself, so a forged or replayed webhook cannot change anything.

Map accounts

Each account in the quoting tool maps to one client or prospect in Outpost. Outpost never creates clients or prospects by itself.

1. On the connector’s Account mapping card, find the account. Accounts appear as quotes come in, and an unmapped one shows Seen on a waiting quote.
2. Select Map.
3. Choose A client or A prospect, and find it.

To move an account, select Change. To remove the mapping, select Unmap.

Match products in the review queue

A quote’s lines name the quoting tool’s SKUs. Each one must match an item in your billing catalog before a quote with it can come in.

1. Select Sales > Quoting tools, then Review queue.
2. Under Items without a catalog match, select Match on a vendor SKU.
3. Find the catalog item and select it.

Match a SKU once, and every later quote with it lines up on its own. Select Ignore for a SKU you never sell through Outpost.

How won quotes come in

When a quote is won in the quoting tool and its account and SKUs are mapped, Outpost imports it on its own. A quote it cannot place waits under Quotes waiting for review, with how many items need a catalog match. Fix the mapping, then select Import, or Ignore a quote you do not want.

The connector’s Recent quotes shows each quote’s State:

State	Meaning
Needs review	An account or a SKU is not mapped.
Imported	In Outpost as an external quote.
Sales order raised	Converted, with its sales order.
Ignored	Ignored by someone in your practice.

External quotes

An imported quote is an external quote in Sales > Quotes. It takes a number from your own quote series and keeps the tool’s number too. The quoting tool’s PDF is stored as the signed copy, and the acceptance is the one recorded in the tool.

An external quote is read-only. It cannot be edited, sent, resent, or revised in Outpost, because the customer agreed to it somewhere else. Change it in the quoting tool. It is not countersigned in Outpost.

It converts the same way as a quote accepted in Outpost: the client, a draft agreement for the monthly lines, a sales order for goods delivered from stock, an onboarding ticket, and the deal marked won. See What accepting a quote creates and Sales orders.

Verify

• Test on the connector succeeds, and Last error shows None.
• After a won quote comes in, Recent quotes shows Sales order raised, with links to the quote and the sales order.

Next steps

• Sales orders
• Sales pipeline and quotes