Adding or editing an Autotask quote

SECURITY  Security level with access to CRM and object permissions to add or edit All Opportunities & Quotes, or edit Mine if you are the owner of the Opportunity associated with the quote.

NAVIGATION  Create > CRM >  Quote

NAVIGATION  Opportunity page > Quick Add bar > New Quote (Alt + 5)

NOTE  If the Kaseya Quote Manager (formerly Datto Commerce) integration and the Quote Prompt feature are enabled, the Choose a Quoting Tool page will open, allowing you to choose either Autotask or Kaseya Quote Manager as the quoting tool. Refer to Selecting a quoting tool.

Opportunities can have zero, one, or multiple quotes. A quote is always associated with only one opportunity. You can:

  • Create the opportunity first, then add a quote
  • Create a quote and select an existing opportunity
  • Create a quote and create a new opportunity for it on the fly
  • Create a quote without selecting or creating an opportunity for it, and allow Autotask to auto-create the opportunity for you.

To create or edit a quote:

  1. To open the page, use the path(s) in the Security and navigation section above.
  2. Optionally, select a form template from the drop-down menu or enter the speed code for the form template. The form template will fill a number of fields.
  3. Populate the remaining required fields (identified by a red asterisk) on all tabs, and other fields as needed.
Field Name Description
Organization Your Autotask instance may be configured to use one of the following terms instead: Account, Business Unit, Client Company, Customer, Site.

Organization or Organization Name refers to the organization associated with the entity. This field is always required.

For this field, you can select a different local term. In your Autotask instance, it may be labeled Account, Business Unit, Client, Company, Customer, Organization, or Site. Refer to Selecting a currency and local terms and symbols.
Opportunity

An opportunity is a potential sale you have identified. This field appears on entities that are associated with a sales opportunity. Depending on permissions, the opportunity name or a link to the opportunity is displayed.

Select an opportunity or click the plus icon to add a new opportunity. You must select an organization first. All active opportunities associated with an organization are available.

CRM notes and To-Dos:

CRM notes and to-dos created from the organization or contact entity can optionally reference an active opportunity for the organization. When you add a note from the Opportunity page, the Opportunity Name field is defaulted in.

Contracts:

If the contract is created while running the Won Opportunity or the Won Quote wizards, the opportunity is referenced here.

Projects:

You can associate an opportunity with the project and do the following:

  • If this is a proposal project, convert the proposal into a project while running the Won Opportunity Wizard. Quoted charges will become project charges. The opportunity's Total Revenue and Total Cost forecast will populate the project's Estimated Revenue/Cost fields (if these fields do not contain any values). Refer to Closing opportunities you have won.
  • Use the linked opportunity's user-defined fields to update the project's user-defined fields. Refer to Copy opportunity UDFs to project UDFs.
  • When the project is completed, you can update the opportunity to Implemented from the Complete Project wizard. Refer to Completing a project.

Quotes:

Select an active opportunity, create a new opportunity, or allow the opportunity to be automatically created. If the opportunity is created automatically, it will have the same name as the quote, and the remaining fields will default to the values described in Default values for auto-created opportunities.

Sales orders:

If Procurement is enabled, sales orders are automatically generated from opportunities when the Won Opportunity wizard is run. The field is read-only.

Tickets:

An opportunity will appear in this field if the Won Opportunity wizard was run and Associate this ticket with this opportunity was selected, creating this ticket in the Post Sale queue.

Quote Name

Enter a name for the entity. If you are going to associate the entity to multiple other entities, consider adding an identifier to the name.

EXAMPLE  If you copy the same contract to many organizations, make the organization name part of the contract name.

Attachments:

The name defaults to the file name, but can be edited. You can attach multiple files with the same name.

Contracts:

The contract name is fully customizable. We recommend using a descriptive name.

Charges:

The field defaults to the product name or the material code, but can be edited. Automatically created charges for block, retainer, or per ticket contracts will default to "[material code name] [purchase start date - purchase end date]."

Products:

The product name appears on quotes, the devices list, and the customer invoice. Names must be unique.

Depending on how you plan to use products, you can set up your products with generic names such as "printer" or "server," or use individual model names and numbers and track unit cost and price.

Quotes:

When you add the quote from an opportunity, the Opportunity Name will default as the Quote Name. On sales orders, the Quote Name is read-only.

Subscriptions:

The field defaults to the name of the product and device, but can be edited. We recommend that you keep the default product name so the billing line item on the invoice will match the product you are billing for.
Description

The Description field appears on many Autotask entities. On entities like ticket, task, note, and to-do, the Description field is a core part of the data record. Wherever it is available, it tracks essential information about the record. This field is often prefaced with the entity name. For example, Quote Description.

Enter a detailed description of the entity instance, the issue with which the customer needs help, or the service that they requested.

Create Date

This field appears on many entities. It tracks the date and time an entity was created, or imported into, Autotask. It is system-generated and cannot be edited. For some entities, it is not exposed in the UI, but it is available in reports and in the API.

Often, date/time variables calculated from the date/time stamp are available in multiple formats.

Examples:

  • [Quote: Create Date Month #]
  • [Ticket: Create Time]
Effective Date/Time

This field appears on entities that can be set up ahead of their intended use or modified effective in the future. It marks the earliest date the entity is active or the earliest date a new price is in effect.

Enter a valid date and time. Subject to your security permissions, it can be edited.
Expiration Date/Time

This field appears on entities that need to become unavailable at a predetermined date. It marks the last date the entity is active. Subject to your security permissions, it can be edited.

Projected Close Date

The projected close date is the date the opportunity is expected to close by.

This field can be edited on opportunities and quotes that are created at the same time the opportunity is created. It is read-only on quotes already associated with an opportunity.

When the opportunity is saved, the Time Until Close field will be calculated. This field displays the number of days to the projected close date. If the projected close date is the current date or in the future, the number will appear in green. If it is in the past, it will be red.
Probability

Most sales teams relate opportunity stages and corresponding probability percentages to allow them to accurately forecast future sales. For example, if you close 1 deal out of 3 when you do a presentation, your Stage 2: Presentation would correspond to a 33 percent probability.

Enter a percentage value that indicates how likely it is that you will be able to close this opportunity.

Contact Name

A contact is a person at an organization who is associated with the entity you are creating or editing.

This field appears on many entities that display the Organization field. You must select an organization before you can select a contact. All active contacts associated with the organization plus the current contact, even if it is inactive, are available. If the organization is a sub-organization Previously: Subsidiary. Your Autotask instance may be configured to use one of the following terms instead: Sub-Account, Sub-Business Unit, Sub-Client, Sub-Company, Sub-Customer, Sub-Site. of another organization, you can select a contact from the list of parent organization Your Autotask instance may be configured to use one of the following terms instead: Headquarters, Parent Account, Parent Client, Parent Company, Parent Customer. contacts that appears below a dashed line.

On some entities, such as ticket and opportunity, you can click the plus icon to create a new contact. Refer to Adding and editing contacts.

In Add or Edit mode, start typing the name of a person or click the selector icon to choose a person from an alphabetic list.
Proposal Project Name

The Proposal Project Name field displays the name of a project linked to the quote or opportunity. On the opportunity, it will display the name of the project linked to the opportunity's primary quote. If there is no project associated with a primary quote and a proposal project was directly associated with the opportunity, then it will display that proposal project.

Linking a proposal project to a quote gives you a second way to quote labor. In addition to entering an estimated number or hours into the quote and selecting a role rate, you can take advantage of the estimate work you did for the proposal project.

When adding a labor item to the quote, you check the Use Proposal Project box. All labor items of the Proposal Project that you tied to this quote on the Edit Quote page will be rolled up into a proposal total and added to the quote as one quote item. The proposal total will populate the Unit Price field.

Refer to Quote labor based on a project proposal.

NOTE   Labor entered here is an estimate and does not create a time entry.

  • To link an existing project, click the drop-down menu and make a selection.
  • Users with access to the Projects module can click the plus icon to the right of the Proposal Project Name field to open the New Project Wizard and add a new project. Refer to Adding a project with new content.
  • Users with access to the Projects module can also create a new proposal project from a template by clicking the New from template icon . Refer to Step 2 (optional): Create a proposal project for more information.
Tax Region

On the New Organization page:

Select the tax jurisdiction whose tax rules will apply to this organization or organization location. This field is inherited by entities that are part of the billing workflow but can be overridden on a quote or invoice. The tax region selected on the quote or invoice, together with the tax category applied to the billing items via the billing codes, determine the taxes on each billing item.

Refer to Configuring your tax table.

Quotes and Invoices

This field defaults to the tax region associated with the organization.

  • If no tax region is selected for the organization, or if you want to change the tax region, click the drop-down menu and select a different tax region.
  • If the organization is tax-exempt, Organization is tax-exempt is displayed. Note that you can select a tax region, if for some reason you need to override the tax-exempt setting.
  • If you selected invoices for more than one organization for processing, the Tax Region field is set to Use Organization Setting and disabled.

Purchase Orders

On purchase orders, you are the customer. The tax region should be used to calculate the tax amount that you can expect to pay for taxable items included on the purchase order. The calculated tax amount only appears on the printed purchase order (similar to Freight) and represents the tax amount you expect to be charged.

The correct tax rate (the one that applies when the vendor sells something to you) is almost never applied. We recommend that you select it manually.

IMPORTANT  When you create a new purchase order from the Purchase Orders page or the Purchasing & Fulfillment page and select a vendor without specifying a tax region, the vendor's tax region will automatically populate if the vendor has a tax region specified.

IMPORTANT  If the Vendor field on a new purchase order form is not populated and you select a tax region before you select the vendor, your tax region selection will not be overwritten when you select the vendor.

IMPORTANT  You can always edit an automatic selection in the Tax Region field to select a tax region based on how your company determines tax jurisdiction.
Quote Active

This check box appears on entities that can be in one of two states:

  • Selected = Enabled or active. The process for which the setting was configured will run.
  • Not selected = Disabled or inactive. The process for which the setting was configured will not run, but the configuration settings are preserved.

Almost all options that are configured on the Admin pages in Autotask can be inactivated. This means that they are no longer available for selection, but existing records retain the selection.

Certain data records such as resources or contracts can also be inactive.

Billing Rules:

Billing items (contract charges) will only be created if the billing rule is active on the day the charge is due to be created.

Quotes:

If you intend to publish the quote to your customer rather than use it for forecasting purposes, make the quote active. If inactive, you will be prompted to make the quote active when you publish it.

Quote Template

All quotes you create are based on a quote template. The quote template controls the content and appearance of the quote, including tax display settings, general page settings, grouping, and descriptive content for quote items.

  • Autotask contains a global default template that is used if a quote template has not been selected at the country, organization, or quote level.
  • If you are doing business in multiple countries, you can specify a default quote template at the country level. The template is applied to all quotes generated for customers in the associated country and will override the global default template. Refer to Managing your Countries list.
  • If you have organizations with unique quoting needs, you can create custom quote templates to address those needs. You then associate the quote templates at the organization level. The organization level default template will override both the global and country level default templates. Refer to The Quote Settings tab and page.
  • If the quote template applied by default to an individual quote is not a good fit, you can apply a different quote template when you create, edit, or preview the quote. The selection you make in the Quote Template field will override all default quote template settings.
  • You can click the plus sign to create a new quote template that will automatically apply to the current quote. Refer to Designing a quote template.

NOTE  If you want quotes created from a quote form template to use the organization's default quote template, leave the Quote Template field on the form template empty.

NOTE  Quotes that use a default template are updated when the template is changed. Quotes that use an explicitly selected template remain unchanged.
External Quote Number

This field is optional and can be edited. It is available on multiple entities and can provide a cross-reference to an external numbering system.

Quote Comment

If the field is populated, the text is automatically displayed in the Bottom of Quote section on the published quote. On the Quote Preview and Quote View pages, the field label is Comment.

Enter remarks directed to the quote recipient.
Approval Status

This field represents what the Autotask user considers to be the current approval status of the quote. This is separate from the External Approval Response field because users may not want their end users directly impacting what they consider to be the approval status, or their end users may supply an approval or rejection outside the system (for example, via phone). This field cannot be null and will contain the options:

Not Requested: Approval has not been requested for the quote.
Waiting Approval: Approval has been requested for the quote, but it is not yet considered approved or declined.
Approved: The quote is considered by the Autotask user to be approved.
Declined: The quote is considered by the Autotask user to be declined.
External Approval Response

This field appears on quotes. It contains the external approval response, the external approval response signature, and the external approval response date of the quote in the following format: "{external approval response} by {external approval response signature} ({external approval response date/time})".

For the External Approval Response, the following values are possible:

  • [blank]: No response has been received.
  • Approved: The client has approved the quote.
  • Declined: The client has declined the quote.
Allow external approval response in Client Portal

This check box controls if the end user will be able to approve or decline the quote in the Client Portal. Refer to Adding or editing Client Portal security levels.
Field Name Description
Payment Terms

When this field appears on quotes and invoices, it informs the customer when you expect to receive the payment for their order. On purchase orders, it indicates the payment terms you expect to receive from the vendor.

Select a payment term.
Payment Type

This field appears on expense items and quotes.

  • On expense items, this field is required. It describes the payment method used for a specific expense item, which in turn determines if the expense is reimbursable or not. For example, if the salesperson used their personal credit card for a business expense, the expense is reimbursable. If they used a company credit card, it is not.
  • On quotes, the field is optional. It would be used to indicate your preferred payment method.

Purchase Order Number

This field appears on entities that are part of the billing workflow, and is applied to labor and charges.

  • If you assign a purchase order (PO) number to a quote (on the Terms tab), and then close the associated opportunity using the Won Opportunity Wizard, any charges created using the Won Opportunity Wizard will inherit the PO number.
  • If you assign a PO number to a contract, the associated billing items inherit the contract's PO number.
  • If you assign a PO number to projects, tickets, or tasks, that PO number will override the associated contract's purchase order number.
  • The PO number appears on invoices. A separate invoice is created for each PO number. If an organization has multiple billing items that are assigned to different PO numbers, Autotask will generate multiple invoices for that organization.

Refer to Working with purchase order (PO) numbers.

Shipping Type

This field appears on quotes and purchase orders. It is used to specify a carrier for product shipments.

Address fields

Address fields are an integral part of organization, contact, and resource records, and are inherited or propagated to entities that are part of the billing workflow. Fields include Address 1, Address 2, City, State, and Zip Code. They can be designated Billing Address, Sold to, Bill to, and Ship to.

The address format on customer-facing documents such as quotes and invoices can be customized.

Complete or change the fields required for a physical or postal address.

For some address fields you can select different local terms. For example, in your Autotask instance, State may be labeled Province. Refer to Selecting a currency and local terms and symbols.
Field Name Description
Resource

A resource is a user at your company who has an Autotask log in. Employees, consultants, or contractors must be set up as an Autotask resource if they do one of the following:

  • They create or edit Autotask entities such as tickets, organizations, or opportunities. In this context, the field label in Autotask is usually Created by or Creator.
  • They work on project tasks, tickets, or sales to-dos. In this context, the field label in Autotask is usually Resource, Primary Resource, or Secondary Resources.
  • They are responsible for sales accounts and any opportunities they generate. In this context, the field label in Autotask will be Account Owner or Opportunity Owner.
  • They are the individual or role-based recipients of notification emails. In this context, the field label in Autotask will be Recipient or Resource.
  • They manage, approve, approve & post, or report on any of these activities. In this context, the field label in Autotask will be Timesheet Approver, Expense Report Approver, or Change Request Approver.

Resources are selected or referenced on many Autotask entities. They may be associated with an entity even if they are not displayed on the UI.

The First Name, Last Name, and Middle Name components of a resource name are displayed either in sort order (Lang, Suzanne M.) or narrative order (Suzanne M. Lang).
Other Email(s)

This field appears in the Notification section of Autotask entities. It lets you send notification emails to recipients whose email is not stored in Autotask, because they are neither a customer contact nor an internal resource. On some forms, there are multiple Other Email(s) fields to allow you to distinguish between To:, CC:, and BCC: recipients.

Enter the full email address for each recipient. Separate multiple email addresses with a semicolon.
Notification Template

Notification templates determine the content and layout of the notification email. Most templates contain not only the subject line and email body text, but variables that pull data right out of Autotask.

NOTE  If the list of recipients includes resources who lack permission to view internal notes, attachments, etc., the text pulled by the variable is replaced with See [Entity Name].

This field appears in entities that support email notification when you create or edit them. The default template is selected, but can be modified. All active notification templates for the entity and event are available.

If it is present, click the preview icon to preview the selected notification template. The notification template is shown with variables instead of actual data.
Subject

This field appears or is enabled in entities that support email notification when you create or edit them. It determines the Subject line for the notification email that is sent out.

If you have selected a notification template, the Subject line is populated by the notification template's subject but can be modified.

Additional Email Text

This field appears in entities that support email notification when you create or edit them. It stores additional text you want to appear in the notification email.

Enter any text that you want to appear in the notification email above the attachment or above the body text defaulted in from the template. Depending on the entity, text that you enter here may or may not save to Autotask. If saved, it will be available for viewing as a system note.
  1. To save the quote and begin adding quote items, click Save & Open Quote. The Quote page will open. Refer to The Quote (Quote Item) page. To save the quote without adding any quote items, click Save & Close.
  2. If the quote was saved without an opportunity, Autotask will automatically create it. The newly created opportunity will have the same name as the associated quote and will use the system default opportunity category. Refer to Managing categories. Additional fields will be populated as indicated in the following table. You can edit the opportunity at a later time if needed. Refer to Adding and editing opportunities

NOTE  Fields that do not appear in the following table will be assigned the default from the opportunity category. If there is no default, they will be left blank.

Field Value
System Fields
Opportunity Name Will be copied from the quote's Name field, regardless of the default in the opportunity category.
Organization Will be copied from the quote's Organization Name field.
Status Will apply the default from the opportunity category. If there is not one, then it will be Active.
Stage Will apply the default from the opportunity category. If there is not one, then it will be the lowest sort-order stage.
Projected Close Date Will be copied from the quote's Projected Close Date, regardless of the default in the opportunity category.
Primary Quote This will be the link to the quote.
Opportunity Owner Will apply the default from the opportunity category. If there is no default, or the default is inactive, then it will be the user creating the quote.
Start Date Will be set according to the rule from the opportunity category. If the rule sets it to be later than the Projected Close Date from the quote, then it will use the Projected Close Date from the quote instead. If there is no rule, then it will be the current date.
Probability 0%
Primary Product None
Use Revenue/Cost of Quoted Items: Yes
All Revenue/Cost fields Will apply the defaults from the opportunity category. If there is no default, the value will be set to 0.
Calculate Totals for _ months Will apply the default from the opportunity category. If there is no default, the value will be set to 1.
Recognize Revenue Will apply the default from the opportunity category. If there is no default, then it will be All at once.
All Advanced Fields Will apply the defaults from the opportunity category. If there is no default, the value will be set to 0.
Line of Business Will apply the user's default line of business, if that line of business is available on the opportunity category. If it is not available, or if the user does not have a default set up, then the default from the opportunity category will be applied.
User-Defined Fields
All non-required fields Empty
All required fields If a default value exists for the field, that value will be used. Otherwise, the field will be left empty.