Welcome to the Fit Small Business Xero training course. In this lesson we're
going to cover how to create an online quote, bid, or estimate in Xero. To follow
along with me, login to your Xero account now or click the link below this video
for a free 30-day trial of Xero. You can also click this link to access our full
Xero course and other helpful resources. Let's get started. As a business owner.
you may need to provide your customers with a quote for products and/or
services that they are considering purchasing from you. Creating a quote in
Xero will allow you to easily keep track of the status, and with just a few clicks
create an invoice, a bill, or purchase order from a quote. while Xero uses the
term 'quote' by default, you can change this to bid, or estimate. depending on
your preference. In this lesson we will walk through the steps of how to create
an online quote, how to create invoices, purchase orders, and bills from quotes.
And how to make changes or delete a quote altogether. From the Xero dashboard
you want to go ahead and click on accounts and select sales. And then click
on the new button and select quote. Let's discuss the information that is required
to complete a quote. Starting with the customer field. You can either type the
customer name or select it from the drop-down that you want to create the
quote for. If you have not set the customer up yet, you can do so by
clicking the new contact option here. The date field will automatically populate
with today's date. You can change this by clicking the drop-down and selecting the
appropriate date here Expiration field: this field will automatically populate
with the default date that you set up for quotes. If the expiration date
differs from the default, you can change it by clicking the drop-down and
selecting the appropriate expiration date here The quote number field will
automatically populate with the next available quote number to ensure that
duplicate quotes are not created. The reference number field is an optional
field. You can enter any of in this field about the quote such as a
purchase order number. Theme: the branding theme that you selected during
the invoice setup will automatically populate in this field. You want to go
ahead and click the drop down if you need to change it. You can add a title
and a summary to a quote by simply clicking this option here. And then
typing the title information and the summary information in these respective
fields. So here's what our title would look like if we decided to do that and
also what an example summary would look like here. From the drop-down you can
select the item that you're providing a quote for. If you have not set up the
item in Xero you can do so by clicking add item here. Be sure to watch our How
to Setup and Manage Products and Services tutorial to learn how to set up
and manage your inventory items. You can click here to access this lesson.
The description field will automatically populate based on the item that you
selected in the previous field. You do have the ability to modify the
description if you need to by typing directly in this field. For the quantity
field be sure to enter the appropriate number of items that the quote is for if
its products. For services be sure to enter a quantity of 1. The unit price
field will auto populate based on the unit price that was setup for the item.
If the item was setup with the unit price of 0, then you can simply type the
unit price directly in this field here. Discount: if applicable enter the
discount that you would like to apply to the quote. If you would like to set
certain customers up with a standard discount you can do so in the invoice
setup. Click here to access this lesson. In the account field you can select the
appropriate account that you would like to track the income for each item sold
from the drop-down. Be sure to watch our How to Set Up Accounts tutorial to learn
more about the chart of accounts. You can click here to access
this lesson. Tax rate: in the How to Set Up Sales Tax Rate lesson, we showed you how
to set up a default tax rate that is applicable to most of the products and
services that you sell. You can click here to access this lesson. Tracking
categories: Xero allows you to set up tracking categories to see how different
areas of your business are performing. For example departments, locations,
or regions. In this example we have region as a tracking category, so you can select
the appropriate region from the drop down here. Amounts are: from the drop down
you can select the amounts whether they should be tax exclusive, or no tax.
To learn more about tax amounts, check out our Organization and Financial tutorial.
You can click here to access this lesson. The amount field will automatically be
calculated by Xero by taking the quantity times the unit price. So there's
no need to do anything in this field. If you need to add additional lines to the
quote, you can do so by clicking this add a new line button here. And then the terms
field: indicate the terms of the quote in this field. You can set this information
up automatically to appear on each quote. We showed you how to do this in the
Invoice Setup tutorial. Click here to access this lesson. Once you've completed
all the necessary fields of the quote, you have the option of either saving the
quote, or sending it to your customer via email. Let's talk about the save options
first. Save as draft: this option will save your quote and allow you to close
out of the screen. The save and continue editing option will allow you to save
your quote before you are done completing the quote. You can save
periodically so that you don't lose any information.
Save and add another: this option will save your quote as a draft and open up a
new blank quote for you to complete. This can be convenient if you have several
quotes that you need to enter for multiple customers or the same customer.
To proceed with emailing the quote to your customer, you want to go ahead and
click the send button once you do that you will see the email template pop up
here. And the fields that you want to complete are the To field here. In this
field, it will automatically populate with the email address that was set up
for the customer. If you would like to send the quote to more than one person,
you simply have to put a semicolon here, and then enter the next person's email
address. Xero will automatically populate the subject to line here. However you can
feel free to modify it as you see fit. Here is a standard messaging in the body
of the email that will go out to your customer. Please note that there will be
a link for your customer to click on to view the quote online. Once they view the
quote online, they can accept, decline, they can send you a question or a
comment, or they can print the quote. And here is the link that will appear.
Last but not least at the very bottom here you have a box that says send me a copy.
You can actually have Xero copy you on the email that is sent to your customer.
Once you've completed all the necessary fields you want to go ahead and click
send, and the email will go out to your customer along with a copy of the quote.
Xero makes it pretty easy to make modifications to quotes that you've
created. So you want to go ahead and return back to the quotes by going to
the account section and selecting sales. And once you're on this screen you want
to scroll down to where you see quotes. Xero groups quotes
into four categories here: draft, sent, accepted, and expired. All quotes that
appear in the draft status are quotes that you have created but have not sent
to customers yet. All quotes that have been sent are quotes that you have sent
to customers and you are awaiting a response from your customer. All accepted
quotes in this group are quotes that have been approved by your customers.
And finally, expired are all the quotes that have reached their expiration date and
we're not approved before the date came. So we'll go ahead and click on the group
that our quote falls into, and then to select the quote you can simply just
click on the customer name and the quote will display. And if you click the
options button in the upper right hand corner you're going to see we've got a
total of five different options that we have to choose from for the quote.
So let's start with mark as accepted. If you don't send quotes via email to your
customers but instead you mail or fax them, once your customer approves the
quote, you will need to manually mark the quote as accepted in this screen to
update the status. Mark as declined: by the same token if you mail or fax a
customer a quote and they decline it, you will need to manually mark the quote as
declined in this screen to update the status. If you just need to make some
changes to the quote based on your customer's request, you can easily revise
a quote by clicking this button and making the necessary changes. Copy to
allows you to save time, because Xero will take the contents of an existing
quote and create a new quote, an invoice, a purchase order, or a bill using the
same information. If we click the Copy to here, here are the options we have. So the
first one is to copy the contents to a new quote. So again if you need to send a
quote for the same exact products and services to another customer, you can
select this option and Xero will copy the information from
an existing quote to a new quote. From there you can make any changes to the
customer or any other information as you see fit. Invoice: once your customer has
accepted a quote you can select this option and Xero will copy all of the
information from the quote to an invoice so that you can easily bill your
customer. Purchase order: if you realize that you need to place an order for
products that you have an existing quote for, select this option to copy the
information from the quote to the purchase order so that you can promptly
place an order to your supplier. And then finally, bill: you can create a bill in
Xero by copying items from an existing quote to a bill that you need to pay.
Once you have made your selection you can go ahead and click the create draft
button so that Xero can create the document for you in a draft status.
The last option that you have here for quotes is to delete a quote . If you want
to delete a quote you can easily do that by selecting this option. Since quotes
are considered a non financial transaction, deleting a quote will have
no impact on your financial statements. That wraps up the lesson on how to
create an online quote, bid, or estimate in Xero. To access our full Xero course
or any of the other lessons in this series, click this link. You can also find
a link below this video for a free 30-day trial of Xero.
If you have feedback about this course or if you have any questions, please
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