Getting started with quotes

This article will guide you through the basics of quotes in Scoro, how to get the most out of quotes in Scoro, structure your deliverables on them, and 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.

1. 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.
• 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.

Even if you don’t send out quotes to your clients, we still strongly recommend incorporating quotes into your workflows in Scoro for internal purposes, as they unlock additional insights into your projects. You can leverage quotes for budgeting and cost estimation, as well as project planning.

2. How to maximize the benefits of quotes?

To make quoting as smooth as possible, we recommend setting up the following on your site first:

• Products and services
• Labor cost

2.1. Standardize your products and services

While you have the flexibility to modify product/service data and price for each project or document, establishing a standard cost and price for your products and services helps to ensure that everyone on your team sells services at a profitable price and that no one deviates too far from the expected profit margin.

Additionally, standardized products and services help automate document creation later on and let you 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 the benefits of standardized services and how to set them up.

2.2. Set up labor cost

In addition to setting up products and services, you should also set up the labor cost for your internal team. This way, you can take full advantage of automated cost estimations on quotes and ensure healthy margins for your services. We’ll take a closer look at how that works in the next paragraphs.

Learn more about setting up labor cost.

3. Structuring your quotes

Scoro’s flexible quoting capabilities let you structure and present your price proposals in a way that best suits your service offerings and internal workflows.

3.1. Deliverables with a single provider

For deliverables where one person will be in charge of delivering the service, you can add the quote line items and simply select the necessary in-house role or user, or an outsourced supplier as the provider.

3.2. Deliverables with multiple providers

For deliverables where multiple roles or doers will deliver the work, you can use the quote estimation matrix to quickly and conveniently add all the necessary collaborators for each deliverable, specify their planned hours, and manage the associated costs. 

Start by adding your deliverables as quote line items. Next, open the estimation matrix view to add necessary roles and users, and plan how the workload and hours will be split among them. This approach allows you to include one high-level deliverable in the client-facing document, while internally linking it to multiple users to break down the price and cost in detail, mirroring the future project plan.

For example, let’s say you’re a digital agency quoting a “New landing page development” project. The project will involve multiple roles:

• Project Manager (e.g., 10 hours)
• UI/UX Designer (e.g., 25 hours)
• Developer (e.g., 35 hours)
• Copywriter (e.g., 20 hours)

You can add a single deliverable to your quote and then use the estimation matrix view to add the necessary roles, users, and planned hours for each.

The site administrator can enable the estimation matrix view by following these steps:

1. Go to Settings > Sales and finance > General and make sure the Assign users on sales document lines checkbox is enabled. Without this setting, the checkbox for enabling the quote estimation matrix won't be available on your site.
   
2. Then, go to Settings > Sales and finance > Quotes and enable the Use quote matrix checkbox.
   

For a step-by-step process of creating a quote, see Creating a quote.

4. 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.

5. Frequently asked questions

Can you hide the unit, unit price, and quantity columns on the quote?

While the product unit, unit price, and quantity fields are always present when creating or modifying a quote, you can remove these details from the client-facing quote PDFs, leaving only the quoted product names and their sum. To do this:

1. Modify an existing quote PDF template or create a new one.
2. Make the following changes in the Price calculation table tab:
   1. In the Price calculation table tab, remove the 'Quantity', 'Price', and 'Sum' fields from the Columns used in the calculation table section, leaving just the product name and the sum there. Adjust the widths of each element so they sum to 100%.
   2. Make sure the Summarize by groups checkbox is disabled, and save the changes.

Learn more about creating and modifying PDF templates.