Handling quote requests

Trade and bulk buyers often want a price before they buy. Instead of adding forty beds to a basket, they ask you for a quote. Those requests arrive under Orders, then Quote Requests. You price them up there and send them back.

Considerations

• Quote requests are an Enterprise feature. The sidebar entry is hidden on other plans.
• You cannot raise a quote request yourself. Every one comes from a customer using the Request a quote button on your storefront.
• There are two ways to answer one: send the customer priced figures to accept online, or turn it into a draft order yourself.
• Saving the draft order is what marks the request Ordered. There is no separate accept step on your side.

Find a request

1. From your Orbit dashboard, go to Orders, then Quote Requests.
2. Click a tab to narrow the list: All, Submitted, Quoted, Accepted, Ordered, Declined or Expired. Submitted is your to-do list.
3. Or type a quote number in the search box.
4. Click anywhere on a row to open it. The whole row is the link.

The list shows Quote #, Customer, Company, Items, Status and Date.

Read the request

The request page shows who asked and when, and holds two things the customer sent:

• Customer message: what they are trying to do, in their own words. This card only appears when they wrote something.
• Requested items: an Item and Quantity table. A quote request carries no prices at all. That is what you add next.

Price the quote and send it

1. Open a request with the status Submitted. The Price this quote panel sits between the message and the items.
2. Set a Unit price and, if you are giving one, a Discount for each line. The Subtotal updates as you type.
3. Choose a Delivery method and enter a Delivery charge, or pick No delivery required. The customer is put on that method at checkout and charged the amount you set.
4. Set Valid for (days), so the quote expires if they do not act.
5. Add a Note to the customer if you want to explain the pricing.
6. Click Send quote. The request moves to Quoted and the customer can accept it online.

Once a quote is sent, the panel keeps a read-only What you quoted summary. Use Revise and resend to change the figures, or Re-quote to start again.

Tip: Trade buyers usually ask several suppliers at once. Answer within a working day and you win quotes on speed alone.

Turn a request into a draft order

Use this when you want to price the job yourself rather than send figures for the customer to accept.

1. Open the request and click Create draft order.
2. Wait a moment. Orbit looks up today's catalogue price for every line before it opens the editor, so you never type a price from scratch.
3. The order editor opens already filled in with the items, the customer, and their message in the Notes card, so it stays with the order.
4. Change the prices, add a delivery charge and check the totals.
5. Click Save draft. The request moves to Ordered and its buttons are replaced by View draft order.

Note: Estimated tax on the editor follows the customer's address, which came with the request. Delivery shows as a dash until you add it.

Decline a request

1. Open the request and click Decline. A panel opens below the buttons.
2. Type a Reason (optional, kept internal) if you want a record of why.
3. Click Decline request. The request closes and moves to the Declined tab.

What each status means

• Submitted: the customer has asked and it is waiting for you.
• Quoted: you have sent your prices and are waiting on the customer.
• Accepted: the customer accepted the prices you sent.
• Ordered: the request has become a draft order.
• Declined by you or Declined by customer: the request is closed and shows who closed it.
• Expired: the validity window you set ran out.

Set up your quote documents

The quote document is the PDF your customer receives. You set its branding and wording once, and every quote you send uses them.

1. From your Orbit dashboard, go to Orders, then Quote Requests.
2. Click Quote document settings. A panel headed Quote document opens.
3. Turn on Show store logo to print your logo at the top of the document.
4. Enter an Accent colour as a 6-digit hex code, such as #1A2B3C. Leave it empty to use your theme colour.
5. Type your Header text and Footer text. Each holds up to 2,000 characters.
6. Type your Terms and conditions. This one holds up to 8,000 characters, so your full trade terms fit.
7. Turn on SKU column to show a product code beside each line, and Signature block to leave room for a signature.
8. Set Default validity (days), from 1 to 365.
9. Click Save. Orbit confirms with Quote settings saved.

Note: These boxes take plain text only. Anything that looks like code is printed the way you typed it. If you close the panel with unsaved changes, Orbit asks you to confirm before it drops them.

What the customer receives

Sending a quote emails the customer. The email is headed Your quote is ready and carries the full quote as a PDF attachment. It shows your store name and logo, the quote number, the date it was issued, the date it is valid until, the total, and your note to the customer if you wrote one. A Download your quote button opens the same document. Below that is a link to the quote in the customer's account, where they accept it and check out at your prices.

You can download a copy of any quote from the request itself with Download quote.

Set when a quote expires

Every quote you send carries an expiry date, so your prices do not stand forever.

1. Open a request with the status Submitted and price it up.
2. In the Price this quote panel, set Valid for (days).
3. Click Send quote. The date the quote runs until is printed in the customer's email.

To change the window that new quotes start with, set Default validity (days) in Quote document settings.

What happens when a quote lapses

• Orbit sweeps for lapsed quotes once an hour and moves them to Expired. Only quotes still sitting at Quoted are moved, so one the customer has accepted, or one that was declined, is left alone.
• The customer can no longer accept it, so they cannot check out at the prices you sent. The expiry is checked again the moment they try to accept, so a lapsed quote cannot slip through between sweeps.
• The quote shows under the Expired tab in your list, and as expired on the customer's account page, without you or the customer opening it.

To give a customer longer, send fresh figures with Revise and resend before the quote lapses. A revision puts the request back to Quoted and moves the expiry date forward.

Related guides

• Managing draft orders
• Creating a manual order
• Editing an order
• Managing orders