Customer quotes

The Customer quotes screen is where you price before you commit. In MRO this is not a commercial nicety, it is the control point: the part comes in, it is assessed, it is priced, and the repair only starts once the customer has agreed.

The quote therefore precedes the customer order, which in turn precedes the invoice.

Why a separate object rather than a state of the order

Because many quotes never become orders. A refused quote is a normal outcome, not a failed order: burying it among the orders would pollute their list and their numbering. It also carries three things an order does not — a validity, a customer response, and revisions.

Pricing

Data entry is the same as for an order: service lines (no article, named by their description) or part lines (with an article), each with quantity, unit price excl. VAT and VAT rate. That is deliberate: on conversion the lines are copied verbatim, not translated, so nothing can be lost along the way.

The “Valid until” field sets how long the offer stands. Beyond that date the prices no longer hold: the quote is flagged as past validity in the list and on its detail view, as long as it is still awaiting a response. A quote that has already been accepted does not expire retroactively — the date binds the offer, not the agreement obtained.

The supplementary quote

This is the important difference from an order: a quote that has already been sent remains editable. In MRO that is the rule, not the exception — teardown reveals damage that could not be seen beforehand, and the job must be re-priced.

Each edit after sending increments the quote’s revision. The form warns you before saving, and the revision number is shown next to the code: you and the customer must be able to say which version you are discussing.

Life cycle

From pricing to order

  1. Draft
    Being prepared — freely editable and deletable.
  2. Sent

    Sent to the customer. Still editable, but each edit creates a revision.

  3. Accepted

    The customer agreed. The quote is waiting to be converted into an order.

  4. Converted

    A customer order was created from the quote. Terminal.

  5. Refused

    The customer did not proceed. A reason is mandatory. Terminal.

  6. Closed without response

    Offer filed for lack of an answer. Terminal.

A quote can be cancelled as long as it has not been converted.

The refusal reason is mandatory. It is the information that is lost fastest and costs the most: it is what you will read back to understand why a deal did not go through.

“Accepted” and “Converted” are deliberately distinct. Between the customer’s agreement and the creation of the order there is a real delay — receiving the public purchase order, for instance. The list must show what is still to be converted.

Converting into an order

The “Convert into an order” button only appears on an accepted quote. It creates the customer order by copying the lines, and moves the quote to “Converted”. The two stay linked both ways: the order carries its source quote, the quote shows the order it produced.

This is also where the Chorus Pro references are captured — executing service code and commitment number. That is no accident: the public buyer issues its commitment after accepting the quote, so they are not known before. Not applicable to a private customer.

Producing the quote document

The “Devis PDF” button, on the detail view, produces the document to send to the customer.

It contains, in order: the header with the number and your logo, the issuer and customer blocks, the references (issue date, validity, customer reference), the line table, the VAT breakdown and totals, the validity notice, your notes if any, and a “Bon pour accord” signature box for the customer to date and sign. A block whose data is empty removes itself — no empty frame on the document.

Unlike an invoice, a quote is not frozen: its current version is always what gets printed. Change it after sending and its revision increases, so the next PDF reflects the new pricing.

The logo, colours and footer mentions come from

Settings → PDF editions. The quote’s layout rests on a template; its visual editor is coming shortly. The issuer identity (legal name, SIRET, VAT) comes from the instance settings: that is your legal identity, not a presentation setting.

If the document shows ⟨champ inconnu : …⟩, the template references a piece of data that does not exist. This is deliberately visible: a silent blank on a quote already sent would go unnoticed.

What this screen does not do

  • It handles neither price catalogues nor commercial discounts.
  • It reserves nothing in stock.