Tracking project financials and having it all in one place can be crucial for a project success and significantly benefit the business. The right budgeting, accounting, financial reporting, procurement and auditing will positively influence project performance. Transparent and fast . With the goal of managing project resources properly and completing the project on time and in budget it is necessary to ensure a transparent and seamless flow of information between the responsible team members and clients.
To take all those needs into account we have created a very powerful Quotes module in Archdesk. It lets you do complete budgeting for a project on your side and based on the data, create and send an appropriate document to your customer including only the details they need to know to pay you the right amount.
In this article you will learn the step-by-step process for creating your quotes, sending the quotes to your clients and issuing purchase orders for the materials.
1. CREATE A PROJECT
To start tracking financials on the project you need to create a project first. To learn how to do it, check the article here.
2. CREATE A QUOTE
Assuming your project is already created in Archdesk open the project and then go to Quotes tab in the left hand-side menu.
All the processes below will be performed in the Quotes tab.
To populate a quote in Archdesk you will need certain types of inputs:
- Sections where you will list your items
- Items with prices
- Budget Category
- Visibility rules
To make it easy for you to add all the data you need to the system we have created a few ways to do so, depending on your current operations. Start with creating a Quote. You can do it in two ways:
- Manually creating the Quote
- Importing a quote from Excel
Manually create a new quote
Create New Quote by clicking the button on the right.
Create Sections
Start with adding Sections for your items. You can name them as you prefer. Go to the Sections tab and click the Create New Section button.
All the Sections will show up in the menu on the left. If you want to edit a section because you have made a mistake or you want to delete it, go to Sections -> Manage Sections -> Select the section you want to modify -> Edit/Remove. Need help? See the instructions here.
Add Items
Click on the section where you want to add your items to and hit the Add Items button or 
the plus button in the bottom right corner. Fill in the details for the item and click add. You can add items one by one.
or
Chose between a Simple item and Advanced item. For the Advanced items you can add sub-items.
The Advanced Items option can be used two-way. You can either treat them as a category for a family of items you will be using (then put 0 in the Offered Unit Price field and add sub-items) or as a main product and its accessories.
Examples
SIMPLE ITEM entry
For the simple item you will need the name, description (optional), quantity, the unit (meters, kg, pcs, etc), offered unit rice and unit net price.
⚠️Tip: Notice that whatever you fill on the white area will be visible to your clients if you choose the item to be visible in general 
. Whatever you put on the grey area is mainly for you to estimate your costs and add some internal notes.
⚠️Tip: You can preview the Quote in your browser. Go to View -> Preview in Browser and click the link that will popup.
Adding more items at once (main products and categories- see below for ) may be easier using the Batch entry option instead adding it one by one. It allows you to add entries one by one in the same window. Click the plus button that you in the bottom right corner and select Batch entry. The entries in the Items Batch Entry window will correspond with how it will look in the Quote after Archdesk System performs calculations.
As you will learn below, the entries with the unit cost and unit offered price equalling 0 are considered as categories and in the main window you will see the sub-items in every category. Main products and categories for products comprise a Batch.
In the Options, you can decide if you want to Offer Prices Per Each Item. This option is useful especially when you are only adding your internal costs like labor or petrol and will make those items invisible.
ADVANCED ITEM entry as a CATEGORY
If you want to create a category for a family of items you can use the Advanced Item option. When adding the item in such case, name the entry as if you'd like to name a category and leave the Offered Unit Price and the Unit Cost empty.
Then add the items in the Sub-Items tab. Add Quantity, the cost and final price. The Cost column (in red) is visible only to you so that you can estimate your budget. The price will appear on the Quote you will send to your customer.
ADVANCED ITEM entry as a MAIN PRODUCT with accessories
If you want to add a main product and then list some additional products under that product, start with adding the Details for the main product and then add the rest of the items in the sub-items tab.
Then go to the sub-items tab as in the previous example and add the items.
⚠️Tips: In this view you can also:
- change the order of the items. Hold the
icon on the left and drag it up and down, - easily remove the item from the list clicking the cross icon
on the right, - change the visibility of the item by (un)checking the checkbox
, - add more details on a single sub-item by clicking the little arrow icon
.
Adding items from a CATALOGUE
If you repeatedly use the same products in your business you can create a Stock and select the items from there when creating a Quote. To learn How to create a catalogues, see the article here.
Import form Excel File
To import quote from Excel file, by clicking the button on the right 
.
The popup window will prompt you to download our Excel template that you can incorporate into your estimating file.
Download the template and fill it in with the required data. If you need help check out the article here on How to prepare your quote in Excel to import to Archdesk.
Then go back and upload your template by clicking Select File.
End Result for you
🚨Remember that you should not add Prices on the items that are hidden from your customer. On the invisible items only add Cost for your budgeting purposes.
End Result for your client
Once your Quote is ready you can preview how it will look to your customer by going to View -> Preview in Browser and clicking the auto-generated link that will take you to your Quote.
When you are finished adding the items you can go set up the Payment Terms depending on the way you collect payments You can choose between stages and valuation types.
3. SEND QUOTE TO CUSTOMER FOR APPROVAL
This is exactly what your customer will receive from you via an email. On the document you will find tabs that correspond to the sections you have created in the quote.
You will also see that the Payment Terms that you have set beforehand are taken into consideration as well. If you want to change the Payment Terms or Payment Terms Type, you can check how to do it in the article here.
Both, you and your customer, can Download the quote as a pdf file.
If your client declines the Quotation they can specify why and you can edit it and make the necessary updates.
You will get a notification about the refusal in the upper top corner.
Edit a quote
To edit a quote go to the Quote listings and hit the three-dot icon 
next to the item you want to modify. If you are editing after the client has rejected the Quote, Archdesk system will ask you if you are sure to move it back to draft.
Archdesk gives you two ways of editing the items. You can do it one by one, or edit the entire Batch of main items.
4. GET APPROVAL FROM ACCOUNTING
If your client accepts the quotation, you will get a notification in the upper right corner and the status of the Quote will change from Client Approval to the Accounting Approval.
This is the final stage before the project can go live. Once you client pays you can go back to the Quote and check in the Accounting Approval status. The system will show you a warning message to make sure that you really want to approve the quotation.
5. CREATE PURCHASE ORDERS
Now that your Quote is approved by the accounting, you can issue Purchase Orders to your suppliers.
You can issue POs on three levels: for the entire quote, for a section, or for a specific item only.
(1) To issue a PO on the entire quote, go to the Details in the sub-menu, then to the Financial Tab and select Create Purchase Order.
(2) To issue a PO on a section, click on that section, go to Financial option and select Create PO.
(3) To issue a PO on an item, click on the three dots next to the item and create a PO from there.
6. TRACK FINANCIALS
Concurrently to the accounting approval process, in the Payments tab, the Deposit box will change its status. You can now go in and add a payment record, mark it as pending or mark it as debt collection or cancel the stage if necessary.
When you add a record of the payment the status of the Deposit-Due box will change to green and the system will let you assign the payment to an existing invoice or create a new one.
If there is no corresponding invoice and you create a new one, the system will auto-populate the data for the new invoice for you.
You will find the invoices in the Invoices Section of your project (Projects Tab -> open project -> Sales Invoices) and in the general Financials Tab
