How to create a Proposal

Proposals are created from a lead rather than from the Proposals area, so the lead has to exist first.

If you have not created the lead yet, do that before you start. The proposal attaches to it and pulls its details through, so a lead with the customer name, dates and quote already on it will produce a far better proposal than one you have half filled in.

Click Create Proposal on the lead

Open your leads view and find the lead you want to send a proposal for. There is a Create Proposal button on the row.

Note: If you can not see the "Create Proposal" button on the lead row, you will need to add it. Click the 3 dot menu in the top right and select "Edit Row Layout". Find the "Create Proposal" button in the drawer, and drag it up on to the row, or onto the actions menu, and save the view.

Choose a template

Clicking Create Proposal asks you to pick a template.

Templates are reusable proposal designs holding your structure, branding, wording and customer journey. There are prebuilt ones you can use as they are, and any you have built yourself will appear alongside them.

If you have not built your own template yet, start with a prebuilt one. You can create your own later once you know what you want to change.

Edit it for the customer

The proposal opens ready to edit. Anything driven by variables is already filled in with that lead's details, so you are usually adding rather than correcting.

Read it through as the customer will see it before you go any further. You are checking that the details pulled through correctly and that nothing in the template reads oddly for this particular job.

Add anything specific to them here. A line about the venue, a note about something they mentioned on the phone, a photo of similar work. Small touches are what separate a proposal from a price list, and they take a minute.

Publish it

Publishing makes the proposal live at its own link. Nothing is sent to the customer at this point.

Send it to the customer

Send the proposal and the customer gets the link to their page. Click the top right drop down menu, and select "Send".

They can then read what you have written, look through the quote or quotes you have given them, choose the option they want and accept it.

What happens after they accept

The lead converts to a booking and the customer carries on to whatever step you have configured, whether that is signing a contract, making a payment, opening their Client Portal or being sent to an External URL.

Doing this faster next time

Everything you edited by hand on this proposal is a candidate for the template. If you added the same paragraph you always add, put it in the template. If you corrected a detail the variables should have pulled through, check the lead was filled in properly.

After a few proposals, creating one becomes picking a template, reading the page and sending it.

Note: All of this can be done automatically with automations. An automation can create a proposal and send it automatically whenever a lead is created.