Sending Quotes
Quote a price, let the customer accept it online, and turn the accepted quote into an order or an invoice with one click. Quotes are part of the Invoicing & Bookkeeping add-on.
Creating a quote
Open Finance → Quotes and click New quote. Pick the customer, set how long the price holds, and add your lines. Quantities and unit prices work exactly as they do on an invoice.
Valid until defaults to 30 days out. After that date the customer can no longer accept online — useful when your own costs move and you don't want a three-month-old price coming back to you.
Like invoices, quotes start as drafts you can freely edit.
If you use Menus, the quote builder has a From menu row that adds a menu item at its menu price. A quote holds items from one menu, and converting it to an order keeps the menu.
Sending it
Click Send to customer. Iraca assigns a quote number, creates a private link, and emails your customer a branded message with the quote PDF attached.
The link opens a page where they can read the quote, download the PDF, and either accept or decline — no login required. Accepting asks for their typed name, which Iraca records alongside the date. A bare click isn't much evidence of who agreed to what; a name and a timestamp are.
If they decline, they can tell you why. That reason shows on the quote so you know whether it was price, timing, or something you can fix.
You'll see when the customer opened the quote, so you know it arrived.
Quotes never touch your books
A quote is a price, not a debt. Nothing you do to a quote — sending it, the customer accepting it, letting it expire — records anything in your ledger, and quotes never appear in your A/R aging or your reminders.
Nothing is owed until you issue an invoice. That's when revenue gets recorded.
Quotes also don't reserve stock. Quoting 500 units doesn't set 500 units aside, so check availability before promising a delivery date on a large order.
Turning a quote into an order or an invoice
When the customer says yes, open the quote and click Convert. Iraca asks what the quote should become, and recommends one of the two:
Create a sales order — for goods you still have to ship. Iraca builds a draft order with the same customer and lines, then takes you to it. From there it follows the normal path: confirm it, pick and ship it, and bill it. That's what takes stock off the shelf, records the cost of what you sold, and gets the sale onto your books properly.
Create an invoice — for services, fees, and anything else with nothing to ship. Iraca creates a draft invoice with the same lines and prices. Review it, finalize it, and send it as normal.
Iraca recommends the order when any line on the quote names a product, and the invoice when none of them do. You can override the recommendation — pick the invoice for goods you've already shipped and are billing after the fact, for instance.
Why goods should go through an order
Billing a goods quote directly skips everything that makes stock work: nothing comes off your shelves, no pick list is raised, no lot is allocated, and your cost of goods sold never records the sale. You'd be invoicing a customer for product your inventory still thinks you have.
Prices are re-checked as the order is built. If you've set a wholesale price or a volume break for that customer since the quote went out, the order picks up your current price. If no price list applies, the quoted price stands — converting never quietly changes a figure your customer already agreed to. Either way the order is a draft, so you can see what it says before confirming it.
A quote converts once, and down one road only. There's no way to accidentally create two debts from one agreement.
Converting an expired quote? Iraca asks you to confirm rather than refusing. Honouring a price you quoted six weeks ago is a commercial decision, and it's yours to make.
You can convert a quote the customer hasn't formally accepted — plenty of deals are agreed over the phone.
When an order isn't possible
Iraca will refuse the order route and tell you why rather than quietly dropping something. That happens when:
- The quote mixes goods with service lines. An order can only carry products, so a "Custom label design" line has nowhere to go. Split the quote into a goods quote and a services quote, or bill the whole thing as one invoice.
- A line has a fractional quantity. Stock moves in whole units throughout Iraca, so 2.5 cases can't become an order line. Round the quote, or invoice it.
- The quote carries shipping, a discount, or other charges. Orders don't have those fields, and the invoice raised from an order can't add them back — so the charge would simply vanish and you'd under-bill. Move it onto a line, or bill the quote as an invoice.
- No line names a product. There's nothing for an order to ship. That's the invoice case.
In each of these, the invoice option is right there in the same dialog.
What quotes don't do yet
- Revisions. There's no v1 → v2 history. Edit while it's a draft; once sent, duplicate it into a new quote to re-price.
- Partial acceptance. The customer accepts the whole quote or none of it. They can't accept three of five lines.
- E-signature. A typed name is the evidence standard for now.
- Deposits on acceptance. Accepting a quote doesn't take money. For catering, raise a deposit invoice from the order once the quote is converted: see Catering Events.
What's next
- Creating Orders — where a goods quote lands
- Invoicing Your Customers — turn the accepted quote into a bill
- A/R Aging & Payment Reminders