RFQ and Invoice

Rod Sanderson

Hi Team,

I am trying to find a template to create/form a RFQ for a customer and then turn that into an invoice. So for clarity - customer ask for a quote to build a product that has multiple steps to complete. for example: Purchase metal, cut metal, shape and form metal, weld metal, pain and ship. Steps and processes might vary depending on the quote. Then the quote is totaled with labor and mark up and sent to customer. customer will then accept or reject, sometimes an RFQ update is needed then once agreed upon become and invoice. Then the Invoice becomes a road map/process for production. Thoughts ...

IsaacS

Hi @Rod Sanderson —

I believe you can do at least part of this workflow using the existing Automation template called "Request an approval when specified criteria are met".

This will let you generate an email to the customer with any of the info they submitted (like specs), as well as some info your team may have added to the quote (like pricing).

When you set up and test this template, you will want to do the following:

1. Ensure the customer is set up as a "Contact" in the customer Contact column with their email address for the notification
2. Ensure your notification settings (behind the gear in the Automation window) is set to Unrestricted
3. Customize the message to include only the fields whose content you want to show and none of the internal content that should be private to your team.
4. Create a checkbox column on the row called something like "Send Quote for Approval" that acts as the condition that triggers the automation sending the quote to the customer

The customer will get the info you specify, and be able to Accept or Decline in their email, and that info will be passed to you.

To send and allow payment on the invoice, you could either (a) Generate Documents and send specific fields to the customer for payment. You will want to create columns for all the data on the invoice, such as customer address, company address, bank info, terms, etc. This could be a lot to keep in your sheet, but it's possible.

or (b) you could trigger an "invoice email" to them with a limited number of fields (like customer name, Contact email, and project name, details) with a link to a third-party invoicing system like Quickbooks or Xero. In that case you'll want to put a link to the customer's invoice dashboard from that other platform in the message.

Hope this helps.

Andrée Starå

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/108782/rfq-and-invoice

Hi,

I hope you're well and safe!

To add to Isaac's excellent advice/answer.

Other options.

• I recently developed something similar for a client where we used a Dashboard to create a PDF invoice, and it looks like a typical Invoice with the items and details, and more.
• Two more options could be to use the integration with Google Sheets or a 3rd-party document integration.

Would any of those options work/help?

I hope that helps!

Be safe, and have a fantastic weekend!

Best,

Andrée Starå | Workflow Consultant / CEO @ WORK BOLD

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richard_abra

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/comment/390363#Comment_390363

Hi Andree, interested to see how you used the dashbord to make the quote look more professional. i have the same problem atm and would love to improve.