Create a New Estimate

General

The Estimates tab on the Invoicing page provides service-based business owners with the tools to easily create, manage, distribute, and view the status of estimates for prospective customers.

How to create a new Estimate

To create a new estimate, take the following steps:

• Click on Invoicing from the left-hand navigation menu

• Click on Estimates

• Click on the [New Estimate] button 

This will take you to the Create an estimate page

• Fill out the appropriate information:
  • Please note that fields with a red asterisk* are required

• Customer – This is the person or business that you would like to send this estimate to. Clicking this field will bring up a drop-down menu where you can search for the appropriate customer to bill. If the customer in question has not yet been added into your business' Autobooks account, you can do do by clicking the [+ New customer] option from this menu. 

If you would like to learn more about adding a customer, please click here to view the How to Add a Customer article

• Status:
  • Pending – This status means you are providing a quote that may not yet have been reviewed by your customer, and may be subject to change
  • Accepted – This status means that the customer has agreed with the provided estimate, and you can now create an invoice
  • Rejected – This means that the customer did not agree with the provided estimate, and that changes will need to be made before proceeding

Please note that the above statuses are simply for your business' record-keeping and don't impact the ability to create an invoice from a given estimate.

• Expiration Date – This is the date after which the provided estimate is no longer valid. Once an estimate has expired, it can no longer be turned into an invoice without first updating this date.
• Product/Service – This is the product your business is selling or the service your business is providing as part of this invoice. By default, only one product/service will be available for your business. You can add additional products/services that are specific for your business by clicking the [+ New product] option from this drop-down menu.

If you would like to learn more about how or why to add a new Product/Service for your business, please click here to view the How to Add a Product/Service article

• Quantity (Qty) – This field is for showing the number of products this invoice is for, or the amount of service provided.
• Price – This field is where you can enter in the amount of the Product/Service you are providing.

Please note that the Amount field is an automatic calculation that is based off of the Quantity times unit Price. 

• Description (optional) – If you need to add in more details about a specific Product/Service, you can do so in this field.
• [+Add item] (optional) – If there is a second (or third, or fourth, or...) Product or Service that you need to add to this invoice, you can insert a new line item by clicking this button.
• Message (optional) – If there is anything else that you would like to relay to the customer receiving this invoice, you can add longer messages in this field. 

After you have filled in the necessary information above, you will need to take one of the following steps to finish the estimate creation process:

• Click the [Send estimate] button to email this estimate to the customer in question.

Please note that if the customer in question does not have an email address on file, you will be prompted to enter one before you can send out this estimate.

• Click the Preview estimate option to view what your customers will see when they open this estimate from their email
• Click the Save to list option to save this estimate without emailing it to your customer

If you have any additional questions, don't hesitate to give our team a call at 844.900.0766 or send us an email at support@autobooks.co!