Making a quotation? Important, because good proposals simply get you more work.
But what exactly is a quotation? Does it already have an impact on my accounts? What should I pay attention to when I make one? You can sleep on both ears, Dexxter puts you well on your way to a professional quotation.
What is a quotation?🔎
Quotations give you the chance to present your products and services, including their prices. So it gives you the chance to make a price proposal to your potential customers.
Of course, such a quotation has no impact on your bookkeeping yet; that only happens when you proceed to issue a sales invoice. Convenient, because in Dexxter that can be done with the push of a button!
Think of a restaurant’s menu, as long as you haven’t ordered anything, that menu remains nothing more than a price proposal.
Attention!
If you make a quotation and the customer then accepts it, as a business owner you are also obliged to fulfil the agreed terms.
Hence, invoices that are disputed often start from a price deviation with the original quotation. Therefore, always try to leave room in your price proposal for a final invoice based on actually consumed materials and/or labour hours at pre-agreed unit prices.
Using quotations
A quotation allows you to offer potential customers much more than just your products or services:
- You may not be the cheapest provider of a particular product or service and you will have good reasons for that. Through a price proposal, you also immediately have the chance to explain these reasons, so potential customers also immediately know where you make the difference.
- Perhaps you have had a verbal conversation with a contact, but the decision is made by someone else. With a detailed price proposal, you effortlessly convince everyone.
- A good quotation is immediately a nice sign for your company. That way, your potential customer knows that you state transparency and structure.
Drawing up a quotation: how do I do that?
An amount of elements are essential for your quotation, fortunately Dexxter guides you through the process. By filling in an amount of fields, you will have a professional document in no time.
Below is a video showing how to do this in Dexxter, an example of an entrepreneur subject to VAT who quickly and efficiently makes a quotation and then converts it into a sales invoice.
Dexxter is fully updated to who you are, for example, are you a VAT exempted entrepreneur? Then you’ll see an updated video tailored to VAT exempted entrepreneurs in Dexxter’s learning centre!
Below is step-by-step textual feedback on how to make a quotation in Dexxter:
Basic information 🧠
Date & due date
The date on which you created your quotation is an obvious part, but don’t forget to add a due date as well.
That due date is completely free to choose, but this way you can be sure that the current conditions (prices, materials, terms…) you are currently offering to your potential customer will not remain in place indefinitely.
Customers
Here, it is best to include as much information as possible about your potential customer. That way, there is no doubt afterwards as to whom your proposal was actually intended for.
Quotation item 📄
Here you can effectively add items, being your products or services.
You can give a concise summary via ‘description’ and then come back to your product or services in detail at the bottom. The more details you include here, the less chance there is of being unclear about what exactly you are offering and your potential customer will appreciate that.
Optionally, you can also add a unit to your product or services here, for example whether you offer in kilograms, litres or hours worked.
Save as a fixed sales item?
If you often offer the same products or services, you can save them in Dexxter as a fixed sales item. This way, the description, price, vAT rate, etc. are already saved.
This way, you have this sales item quickly and easily available for all your future quotations or sales invoices.
Comment 📢
Here you can add an optional message for your potential customer.
Think of certain details that you still want to mention or emphasise separately. Or a reference to an earlier contact or discussion.
Quotation all ready? Send it! 📤
Then you can go to Dexxter and send your quotation directly to your potential customer by e-mail. Not only does this save you a lot of time, but it also creates a handy summary to follow everything closely.
Has your customer sent you a signed version of your quotation in the meantime? Give your quotation the status ‘accepted’. This way, you create a handy summary of which documents have which status (accepted, refused, etc.).
Dexxter makes it easy for you!
Dexxter is the accounting software for Belgian sole proprietors who want to take charge of their own bookkeeping!
Would you like to discover Dexxter?
Start your free trial today and discover all our functionalities for 30 days.
Do you still have specific questions? That’s perfectly normal, many from your fellow entrepreneurs for that matter!
This is precisely why we have also built a community in Dexxter. That is a place in the application where entrepreneurs can ask questions and get answers from other entrepreneurs, sparring together to find solutions.
We also have learning center available in Dexxter, packed with content, videos, courses and much more! You are not alone as a (starting) self-employed person, let that be clear!
