Sales pipeline and quotes

Sales is where your practice works new business: the companies you are selling to, the deals in progress, and the quotes you send them. A quote is a priced offer the customer opens at a private link, adjusts where you allow it, and signs electronically. When they accept it, Outpost sets up the client and the paperwork behind it. This page covers setting up sales, working the pipeline, writing and sending a quote, and what happens when the customer accepts.

Before you begin

• You are on the MSP plan.

• Your products are in the billing catalog. See Billing catalog.

• Sales permissions:

  Permission	Allows
  crm:read	Reading prospects, deals, activities, quotes, and the sales settings
  crm:write	Managing prospects, contacts, deals, activities, and draft quotes, and requesting approval
  crm:send	Sending, resending, withdrawing, revising, and countersigning quotes, and handling the accept link
  crm:approve	Approving and rejecting quotes, and changing the sales settings and pipeline stages. Sales > Approvals and Sales > Settings appear only with this permission.

  The Sales role holds crm:read, crm:write, and crm:send, and no client billing permission. See Roles and permissions.

Set up sales

Select Sales > Settings. Changing them needs crm:approve.

Card	Settings
Branding	Logo (PNG or JPEG, up to 256 KB), Display name, Accent color, and Reply-to address. This is what the customer sees on the quote, its page, and its PDF.
Quote defaults	Quote prefix, A quote stays valid for (days), Default cover letter, and Default terms.
Approval rules	When a quote must be approved before it can be sent. See Get a quote approved.
Automation	Raise a renewal quote before an agreement ends, Remind a customer before a quote expires, Nudge a customer who has not opened a quote, and Countersign an accepted quote before it becomes a client.
Pipeline stages	The columns deals move across, in order.

In Automation, each number is a count of days, and 0 turns it off. Raise a renewal quote before an agreement ends opens a renewal deal and a draft quote for each agreement that ends within that many days. Remind a customer before a quote expires emails the quote’s recipient that many days before the quote expires. Nudge a customer who has not opened a quote emails the quote’s owner on your team, not the recipient, when the quote is still unopened that many days after it was sent.

The pipeline starts with the stages Lead, Qualified, Proposal, Negotiation, Won, and Lost. You can add, rename, reorder, and remove stages. There is always exactly one won stage and one lost stage.

Work the pipeline

Add a prospect

A prospect is a company you are selling to. It becomes a client when a quote to it is accepted.

1. Select Sales > Prospects, then New prospect.
2. Under The company, enter the Name every quote is addressed to, and optionally the Website, Phone, Industry, and Owner.
3. Enter the Address.
4. Under First contact, optionally enter the person a quote is emailed to.
5. Select Create prospect.

A prospect’s page has the tabs Overview, Contacts, Opportunities, and Activity. Its Actions menu offers New quote and Archive.

Open a deal

An opportunity, shown as a deal on the board, is what a quote is written under.

1. Select Sales, then New opportunity.
2. Choose the Company, a prospect or an existing client. It cannot be changed later.
3. Enter a Name, and choose the Stage, Value, Expected close, Kind (New, Upsell, or Renewal), and Owner.
4. Save.

Pipeline shows deals as a Board or a List, with tiles for the open pipeline, quotes awaiting acceptance, quotes expiring in 7 days, deals won this quarter, and overdue follow-ups. Drag a deal to move it to another stage. When you mark a deal lost, enter Why it was lost.

Log activity and follow-ups

On a prospect or a deal, log a Note, Call, Email, Meeting, or Task. What you enter is never shown to the customer. A task has a Due date and appears in Sales > Follow-ups, overdue first. Follow-ups shows Mine or Everyone. Select Done to close one.

Write a quote

1. Select New quote on Sales > Quotes, on a deal, or on a prospect.
2. Under This quote, enter:
   • Title, and in For, the prospect or client the quote is addressed to.
   • Contact, the person the link is sent to. A quote to a client uses its billing contact when this is empty.
   • Valid for in days, or Expires on. The link works until the end of that day in your practice’s time zone.
   • Term in months. Zero is month to month.
   • Time on the agreement: Covered by the agreement or Billed as it happens. This decides how the resulting agreement treats logged time that no other rule matches.
   • Agreement starts on, which is empty to start on the day the quote is accepted, and the Billing day.
   • Agreement template, which shapes the agreement the signed quote creates.
   • Tax rate as a percentage.
3. On the Invoicing card, choose when the sales order this quote raises is invoiced, in Invoice the order, and the Deposit. Leave them for the practice default. See Sales orders.
4. Optionally, choose a quote template under Start from a template, and write the Cover letter.
5. Select Add a section for a list of lines, or Add a pick-one section for options the customer chooses between, such as good, better, and best.
6. In each section, select Add a line. Pick a Product from your catalog or describe the line yourself, then set the Kind (One time or Monthly), Quantity, Unit price, Discount, and Tax. For each line you can also:
   • Let the customer drop it, which makes it optional, and start it already chosen.
   • Let the customer change the quantity between a least and a most.
   • Make it the default option in a pick-one section.
7. Enter the Terms, which print at the end of the quote and on the signed copy.
8. Select Save. Nothing has gone to the customer yet.

The totals show the amount due on acceptance, the monthly amount, the contract value, and, from each product’s unit cost, the margin. With a deposit, they show the One-time total, the Deposit due on acceptance, and the Balance invoiced on delivery. Costs and margins are never shown to the customer.

To reuse a quote’s shape, select Save as a template.

Get a quote approved

Approval rules make a quote wait for an approver before it can be sent. Each rule is checked against the quote’s default selections, and 0 turns it off:

• Contract value above: one-time plus recurring across the term, before tax.
• Any line discount above: a percentage, checked on each line.
• Blended margin below: a percentage. A quote with no costs recorded never trips it.

When a rule fires, the quote’s Actions menu offers Request approval instead of sending. Everyone who holds crm:approve is emailed, and the quote waits in Sales > Approvals, oldest first, with the reasons recorded. An approver selects Approve or Reject. A rejected quote returns to Draft. Editing an approved quote also returns it to Draft.

Send a quote

1. On the quote, select Actions > Send to the customer.
2. In Send to, leave the box empty to use the contact on the quote.
3. Optionally, enter a Message to sit above the link in the email.
4. Select Freeze and send.

Sending freezes the quote. Its number, lines, prices, and tax rate never change again, because this is what the customer may sign. The customer is emailed a private link and the quote as a PDF.

While the quote is out, the Actions menu offers:

Action	What it does
Send it again	Sends the same quote and the same link again.
Copy the accept link	Copies the customer’s private link.
Replace the accept link	Issues a new link. The old link stops working.
Withdraw	Takes the quote back. Enter a Reason, which is kept for your practice and not sent to the customer.
Revise	Writes a new draft revision with the same number, and marks this one Superseded. Its link stops working.

Treat the accept link like a password. Anyone who holds it can sign the quote.

What the customer sees

The link opens a page with your branding, the quote’s sections and lines, and What it comes to: the amount Due on acceptance, the monthly amount, and the Term. The page says that only the amount due on acceptance is charged when they sign, and that the monthly amount is billed by the agreement. The customer can open the quote as a PDF.

The customer can choose between options, drop optional lines, and change quantities where you allowed it. Prices come from the quote as you sent it. They can then:

• Accept this quote: enter Your full name, which is the signature, and optionally Your job title and a drawn signature, then tick the consent statement and select Accept this quote.
• Decline this quote, with an optional message to your practice.
• Ask a question, which emails the quote’s owner and leaves the quote open.

After accepting, the customer is emailed a signed copy as a PDF.

What accepting a quote creates

When the customer accepts, Outpost converts the quote:

1. The client. A quote to a prospect creates a new client with its own database, fills its billing profile from the prospect, and marks the prospect Now a client. A quote to an existing client uses that client.
2. A draft agreement from the monthly lines, when the quote has any, using the quote’s agreement template and its Time on the agreement choice. Nothing recurring is charged until you activate it. See Client agreements.
3. A draft invoice for the one-time lines, when the quote has any, unless they bill as project milestones.
4. A project for each project template named by the accepted one-time products. Several products that name the same template make one project.
5. An onboarding ticket in the client’s workspace, Onboard followed by the client’s name. When the quote went to an existing client and sells a project, the ticket is Kick off followed by the project’s name instead.
6. A sales order for the goods, when a line’s product is delivered from stock. When the order is invoiced on delivery, the goods leave the acceptance invoice, and a deposit invoice is raised instead if the quote asks for one. See Sales orders.
7. The deal is marked won.

The quote’s What it became card shows In progress, Done, or Failed, with links to what was created. If it failed, fix the cause it names, then select Actions > Try the conversion again.

Countersign

If Countersign an accepted quote before it becomes a client is on, the conversion waits, showing Waiting for a countersignature, until somebody at your practice signs too. Select Actions > Countersign, enter Your full name, select the checkbox to agree to the statement shown, and select Countersign. The customer always gets their signed copy straight away. Once the quote is countersigned, the customer and the quote’s owner are emailed the fully executed copy.

Quote statuses

Status	Meaning
Draft	Being written. A draft that was never sent can be deleted with Delete this draft.
Waiting for approval	An approval rule fired and approvers have been asked.
Approved	An approver said yes. It can be sent.
Sent	Frozen and emailed to the customer.
Viewed	The customer opened the link.
Accepted	The customer signed it.
Declined	The customer declined it.
Expired	The expiry date passed before it was accepted.
Withdrawn	Your practice took it back.
Superseded	Replaced by a later revision.

Sales > Quotes lists every quote with its Number, Title, For, Status, Due on acceptance, Monthly, Contract value, Expires, and Owner.

Verify

• After sending, the quote shows Sent, and Viewed once the customer opens it.
• After acceptance, the client is on Clients, and its workspace shows a draft agreement under Client billing > Agreements.

Next steps

• Client agreements
• Invoice clients
• Projects
• MSP reports