Proposal Templates Overview

A proposal template is a reusable proposal design. You build the structure, branding, wording and customer journey once, and every proposal you send from then on starts from it instead of from a blank page.

It is the one thing in the Proposals area that pays you back every time you use it. A good template turns a half hour job into a 30 second one.

Where to find proposal templates

Open Proposals in your sidebar and go to the Templates section.

If Proposals is not in your sidebar, click your Profile at the bottom left, then Settings, then Menu, then + Add Menu, select Proposals as the Menu Item Destination and save.

Creating a new template

You can start from one of the prebuilt templates or build your own from scratch.

Starting from a prebuilt one is usually faster even if you end up replacing most of the wording, because you are editing something that already has a sensible structure instead of deciding what a proposal should contain.

What to put in a proposal template

Include everything a customer needs in order to say yes, and leave out anything that makes them stop and ask you a question first. Ideally we handle every potential "buyer objection" you can think of.

Start with who you are and why they should care, kept short. Then what you are offering and what it includes. Then the quote itself. Then whatever normally comes up before someone commits, which for most people means reviews, previous work, and answers to the questions you get asked every single time.

Anything you find yourself typing into every proposal belongs in the template, not in the individual proposal.

Adding your branding

Your logo, colours, fonts and imagery all sit in the template, so the page a customer opens looks like it came from you rather than from software.

It is worth spending real time on this. For a lot of customers the proposal is the first properly designed thing they see from you, and it is doing the job a brochure used to do.

Adding variables so the template fills itself in

Variables are placeholders that pull in the details of whichever lead the proposal is attached to. Put a variable where the customer name should go and it becomes their name on their page.

Variables are what make a template worth building. Without them you are editing every proposal by hand, and with them you pick the template and the page is already personalised before you have typed anything.

Setting the customer journey

The template can also carry what happens after someone accepts, so you are not configuring it on every proposal. Contract, payment, Client Portal, or an External URL of your choosing.

Set it here once at the level that suits most of your work, and override it on individual proposals when a job needs something different.

Editing a template later

Templates are meant to be edited. Send a few proposals, notice which questions customers still email you about, and put the answers into the template. After three or four rounds of that, the template stops generating questions altogether.

Using the template

Once the template is saved, you use it from a lead. Open the leads view, click create proposal on the row, choose your template, edit anything specific to that customer, publish, and send.

Note: You can also automate this process with automations. Every lead that comes in can have a proposal automatically created for them.

If you cannot see a create proposal button on the row, it has not been added to your layout. Open edit row layout and add it.

How many templates do I need?

Most people only need one. Build it properly and it will carry the majority of your enquiries.

Build a second when you have a genuinely different offer or a genuinely different type of customer, not just because a job feels slightly unusual. Anything that varies job by job should be handled by variables and by editing the individual proposal, not by another template you now have to keep up to date.

An example of a different template might be one that is specific to a venue. These often convert extremely well because the customer can see that you've worked at that venue before and are the trusted supplier there.