If you use QuickBooks Desktop, you should be familiar with creating Estimates. An estimate, or quote, is a proposed price for your products and services that you will give to a potential customer.
The great thing about Method is its two-way sync with QuickBooks Desktop. With our sync, any user with the given permissions can create an Estimate (as well as other transactions) in Method and it will sync immediately to QuickBooks. Your Method users do not need access to your QuickBooks file at all.
In the last article of our onboarding series, we created a lead as well as related activities to keep track of our interactions with her. In this article, we will create a new estimate for her as well.
When viewing your lead, you will see the estimates associated with this customer when you select the Estimates tab. We will start from here.
1 . Click Estimates in the App Panel, and then click ⊕ New.
This will create a new Estimate. Note that this estimate (and all transactions) use Customers, not Contacts. You can read more on this in our article "What is a Contact?"
Also note that the estimate can have related activities, however, these activities are not associated with the contact. They are only for the estimate itself.
2. The next few fields for the Estimate are fields you may be familiar with if you use QuickBooks Desktop. The only required field here is the estimate date.
The following fields are specific to Method:CRM.
Sales Rep - You can assign an estimate to a Sales Rep which is synced from QuickBooks Desktop. Sales Reps can be attached to Method Users.
Tags - Use tags to categorize your estimates.
Opportunity - You can associate this estimate with an opportunity (which will be covered in later).
Wait for approval before syncing - This indicates the estimate will not sync to QuickBooks. Since the customer is a lead and doesn't sync, it would make sense that her transactions also don't sync. However, if you were to uncheck and save this estimate, then the Customer Lead will automatically convert to a Customer and also sync to QuickBooks.
3. The item line grid holds the items for this estimate. Click inside the grid and add some items to this grid. In our example scenario, we quoted an ice rink job.
4. Click Save at the bottom of the screen. This will save your Estimate and update the totals for the Estimate.
Note the buttons also allow you to do a number of other actions. Selecting the down arrow [∨] will show you more options:
More Actions [∨] -
Clear / New: Clear the form and create a new estimate
Delete: Delete the estimate
Make a copy: Copy the estimate
Create [∨] -
Create Invoice: This will create an Invoice from the estimate, copying the line items and and other transaction information.
Create Sales Order: This will create a Sales Order from the estimate, copying the line items and and other transaction information. Remember, QuickBooks Online does not have sales orders, so Sales Order transactions will not sync to QuickBooks Online.
Print: Create a PDF document which can be printed. (Do not block pop-ups).
Email: Send an email with a link to a personalized portal for the customer. This portal will contain this estimate as well as other transactions they have.
Save [∨] -
Save & New: Save the estimate and create a new one.
Save & Back: Save the estimate and go back a screen.
Congratulations!
This concludes creating an estimate for your contact! If you are following along, you may be wondering why the estimate hasn't synced to QuickBooks Desktop like we promised, however, remember, the customer is currently a lead, and thus will not sync.
Now, if you are a sales representative or a sales manager, you may want to know how to encapsulate all that you learned within the Sales Opportunities App.
Fortunately, we have you covered, so please see our next article Onboarding - Create an Opportunity.