This article will guide you through the basics of quotes in Scoro, how to get the most out of quotes in Scoro, how to structure your deliverables, and how to manage the permissions related to quotes.
We have separate articles on creating quotes, modifying and using quotes, quote templates, and more. Check the See also section for links to these articles.
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1. Plan availability
Quotes are available in the Sell and Estimate core apps and across all legacy plans (Essential, Standard, Pro, Ultimate, Core, Growth, Performance, and Enterprise).
Quoting capabilities differ across the core apps and legacy plans:
- Sell core app: Quotes work as simple price proposals. You can define the client-facing scope, quantities, and pricing using service prices, but you can't estimate internal costs, assign in-house or outsourced providers, or track margins on the quote.
- Estimate core app: Includes the full quote builder, with service-based and role-based pricing, cost and provider info per line, margin calculations, and the quote estimation matrix for deliverables with multiple providers.
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Legacy plans:
- Essential, Standard, Core, and Growth: Includes the full quote builder except the quote estimation matrix.
- Pro, Ultimate, Performance, and Enterprise: Includes the full quote builder with the quote estimation matrix.
For more information, visit our Plans & Pricing page.
2. What are quotes in Scoro?
Quotes have a two-fold benefit in Scoro, as they help to set clear expectations for the project both externally and internally:
- For the client, the quote is the price proposal – a document that clearly states what they will get and how much they will have to pay for it. It helps ensure that you and the client are on the same page regarding the project's scope.
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For the internal team, the quote is the budget – it outlines how much you will earn for the project, how much you will have to invest in it, and how much you can expect to profit from it. It encourages you to think through the high-level deliverables and predict the quantity, cost, and price of the resources required to complete the project with the desired margins. In other words, you can estimate right off the bat whether you’re taking on a profitable project.
- This internal budgeting benefit — cost estimation, provider assignment, and margin tracking — requires the Estimate core app. If you only have the Sell core app, the quote still works as your client-facing price proposal, but it won't include cost or margin data.
Even if you don't send quotes to clients, we still strongly recommend incorporating quotes into your Scoro workflows for internal purposes, as they unlock additional insights into your projects. If you have the Estimate core app enabled, you can use quotes for budgeting, cost estimation, and project planning.
3. How to maximize the benefits of quotes?
To make quoting in Scoro as smooth as possible, we highly recommend doing the following on your site (note that these functionalities may require specific core apps or legacy plans):
3.1. Standardize your products and services
While you can always add and modify product/service data and pricing for each project or document, we recommend creating a database of products and services with standardized costs and prices. This way, you can:
- Ensure that everyone on your team sells services at a profitable price, and no one deviates too far from the expected profit margin;
- Automate document creation later;
- Generate reports with comparable data. For example, you can easily analyze which services/products are most profitable using the detailed financial report.
Read more about adding products and services.
3.2. Set up labor cost
In addition to standardizing products and services, we highly recommend setting up labor costs for your internal team. This way, you can take full advantage of automated cost estimations on quotes and ensure healthy margins for your services.
Note that labor cost is available in the Track core app and in the legacy Pro, Ultimate, Core, Growth, Performance, and Enterprise plans. Learn more about setting up labor cost.
4. Structuring your deliverables on a quote
Scoro's flexible quoting capabilities let you structure your deliverables in a way that best suits your service offerings and internal workflows:
- If your site has enabled only the Sell core app, you can create price proposals by adding your products and services (your deliverables) to the quote one by one as line items.
- If your site also has the Estimate core app enabled, you can use the full quote builder and choose how to add your deliverables to the quote:
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Single-provider deliverables – for deliverables where one person or supplier will deliver the service, add them as separate line items, then select the necessary in-house role or user, or an outsourced supplier, for each.
- Multiple-provider deliverables – for deliverables where several roles or doers will share the work, you can use the quote estimation matrix to add all the necessary collaborators, specify their planned hours, and manage the associated costs. The matrix is available only with the Estimate core app and on the legacy Pro, Ultimate, Performance, and Enterprise plans. Learn more about how to enable and use the quote estimation matrix.
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Single-provider deliverables – for deliverables where one person or supplier will deliver the service, add them as separate line items, then select the necessary in-house role or user, or an outsourced supplier, for each.
For a step-by-step walkthrough of how to create a quote, see our Creating a quote article.
5. Building project timelines on quotes
Quote timelines are available in the Estimate core app. Learn more about our Plans & pricing.
Scoro lets you build a project timeline directly from your quote by adding start and end dates to the quote line items.
Setting quote timelines has two benefits:
- Accurate revenue distribution and forecasting – instead of spreading the quoted amount evenly, Scoro distributes the revenue proportionally across the months your quote lines actually cover.
- Automated task setup – when you create tasks from the quote, the tasks automatically inherit the same start and due dates as the quote lines, so your project's Gantt chart is populated without any manual work. Learn more in our Creating tasks from a quote article.
The start and end dates remain on the quote after you create tasks from it for reference.
You can also include the deliverable start and end dates on client-facing quote PDFs. For more information on how to set this up, see our Creating, modifying, and deleting PDF templates article.
Before you can add start and end dates to your deliverables, site administrators must enable the quote timeline feature by going to Settings > Sales and finance > Quotes and enabling Build quote timeline, then adding start and end dates for each quote line checkbox.
Learn more about creating a quote.
6. What else can you do with a quote?
Once you've created a quote, Scoro offers several ways to keep working with it:
- Send the quote to your client – share it via email or a shareable link. Learn more about quote sharing.
- Turn the quote into other items – reuse the data from your quote to automate the creation of projects, tasks, invoices, bills, and more. This way, all project-related data is automatically interlinked, saving you from entering the same data multiple times across different documents. To learn more, check out the related articles:
- Create quote templates – build quote templates from scratch, or turn an existing quote into a template to speed up future quoting.
- Track active quotes in the pipeline – monitor all your active quotes and their statuses in the Pipeline view.
7. Approvals for quotes and other documents
Scoro lets you add an extra layer of oversight to your sales and finance processes by enabling quote approvals on your site. This is useful if you want a second pair of eyes on larger deals — for example, to double-check pricing, scope, or margins before a big quote goes to the client.
Once approvals are enabled and a document exceeds the sum threshold you've set, the person working on it must request approval and wait for it to be granted before they can proceed.
You can also set up approval workflows in Scoro for invoices (including scheduled invoices) and purchase orders. Learn more about approvals.
8. Managing quote permissions
With permission sets, you can fully customize what the different users can do on your site regarding quotes:
- Viewing quotes – control whether users can view all quotes on your site, only quotes linked to their projects and contacts, or no quotes at all
- Modifying quotes – control whether users can modify quotes of other users, quotes that are confirmed, or quotes with additional statuses
- Quote templates – control whether users can create new quote templates and modify existing quote templates
- Quote confirmation and statuses – designate whether users can confirm quotes and quote line items, set the status of quotes to Completed, and assign additional statuses to quotes
- Deleting quotes – designate which users can delete quotes on your site.
Learn more about permission sets.