Creation of Customer Quotes

[johngwms]

Most of my customers are businesses and many of them require a quotation before they are able to place their order online.

I am increasingly being called to ask for a formal quotation before an order is placed. Of course I can do this but it is a time consuming process.

Many of my competitors offer a "generate quotation" facility where items added to the shopping basket can generate a quotation which can be emailed to the customer.

It would be great if Actinic had such a facility.

[leehack]

Change the name of an unused payment method, payment by cheque for example to 'request for quotation' they can then proceed as normal and at payment stage just select that as the payment method. Might be a reasonable workaround in the meantime.

[Duncan Rounding]

The closest you can probably get to this is to create a new payment option called 'Quotation' (which could perhaps be invoice with goods reworded) and let the customer go through the checkout.

Sorry - didn't see your post Lee.

[johngwms]

Thanks guys.

Yes, it would work but it is not very user friendly.

I was thinking of having a button called "Send Quote" alongside "Checkout".

Do you think that would work if the required code to setup the payment method and action the "Quote Checkout" could be put into place?

[Mike Hughes]

Hi John,

If this is engineers, etc who need to attach a quote to a request form to get it approved / purchased then presumably they're going to want to have proper details on it like their business address, date, quotation number etc.

Presumably the best way then would be to have the 'Send Quote' button alongside the payment button. This way, they'd have entered their name, delivery details, email address, etc and you would then have a copy of it on your system for reference (and also to follow up after 30 days or whatever).

It ought to be fairly easy at that stage to create a 'send quote' button that mimics the normal 'next' button and uses a preset payment method.

Mike

[leehack]

That was my thinking too, they are going to have to tell you what they want and who they are and how to get hold of them - which is exactly what going through the checkout will take from them, they just need to bypass the payment system.

If you don't take the above info off them, how are you going to provide a quote? If you are going to need this, is there a better way than using the site? They can even ring up and pay when ready having already ordered.

[johngwms]

You may well be correct Mike. I hadn't thought through the implications well enough. At the moment I am just trying to work out if it is feasible to add this facility.

It still think it would be helpful to have the Quote button displayed alongside the checkout button in some way. This would allow a parallel track to be followed to the normal checkout process (without the actual payment part) plus giving the opportunity to add additional information such as different shipping charges, terms etc.

Anyway, it requires more thought...

One of our suppliers based in the USA does have this facility and the quotation is sent by email to the prospect and cc'd to us so we can sent them our quotation as their UK distributor. This system does seem to be very popular with some of their larger customers for the reasons you state. This is probably because it makes life easier for the customer, which after all is what we should be doing.

[Mike Hughes]

You could build an add-on quote system outside of Actinic if you really want to.

The product information you need is in the cart cookie so all you really need to do is pop the relevant bits into a templated email and bobs your uncle. You could add a simple 'send quote' button beside the mini cart.

What you'd be missing though is everything regarding the delivery charges (unless you request location early) and VAT rates (Although these shouldn't need changing too often - or so you'd think). You also wouldn't have the customer details or the order pre-entered into Actinic.

Mike

[johngwms]

Yes, indeed.

I could just flag that the Send Quote button had been pressed then go through the checkout process to obtain the address details etc before leaving Actinic (if the flag is set).

As I use Microsoft Office Accounting, this would be my tool of choice to send the quote (I just cannot bear the thought of going back to Sage!).

Thank you Mike

John