An estimate is an informative document that a supplier issues to its customers to indicate the price of its products and services. It contains the information of the company, the clients, and a description of the items or services with their specifications. The prices shown on an estimate can be maintained in a defined period, and the conditions or characteristics of the negotiation, such as financing terms or discounts for prompt payment can also be included in this document.
For example: "the Ideal company creates an estimate to its client Alejandro González in order to indicate the specifications of the products it offers, their price, as well as the effective date of this proposal."
You can create estimates in Alegra to share with your clients the price of your products or services. This document doesn't generate changes in your inventory or bookkeeping accounts.
Follow this steps to create an estimate in Alegra:
1. Click on the option "Sales" from the main menu.
2. Select the “Estimates” option.
3. Click on the “New estimate” button.
4. Complete the form with the requested information.
5. Click on the “Save” button.
Like this:
Estimate form:
These are the most important fields you must fill in this form:
- Contact: Select the client to whom you want to issue the estimate.
- Phone: Insert the phone number of your client.
- Creation date: Include the date when the estimate was created.
- Expiration date: According to the chosen term, you will see an expiration date, and it will be counted from the day the estimate is created. If you choose "manual expiration" you can select the expiration date you want.
- Vendor: Select the vendor who created the estimate.
- Price list: Select the price list you wish to use with this estimate.
- Notes: Here you can add additional information that will be visible in document printing.
- Comments: Use comments to add important information. These are not visible when printing.
Product/Services:
- Price: Include the cost of the products or services you want to sell.
- Reference: Insert an alphanumeric code that identifies a product or service.
- Disc %: Add in the discount you want to apply on the price of the product or service.
- Tax: Select a product or service tax to include it in the current estimate.
- Description: Add or modify a product description. This applies only for the estimate you are creating.
- Quantity: select the number of products you want to sell.
- Total: The system calculates the total value of the products and then deducts any discount on quantity.
Once you have saved the estimate in the system, you can edit it, print it, turnt it into a sales invoice, send it by mail or clone it (this will copy all the information from an estimate to generate a new one).
You can also consult your list of estimates to see their status. This lets you know which estimates have been invoiced, and monitor them.
Like this:
In Alegra you can also export to an Excel file the list of all your estimates by selecting a period of time:
If you have doubts about this or other processes in Alegra, our support team is ready to help you.
