Help Center

You must have the proposal module enabled and permissions to create a new proposal.

Go to Sales > Proposals and click Add Proposal to build your new proposal. You can also create a proposal by using the + menu at the top of the page, and choosing the Add Proposal button.

There are multiple steps you need to go through to create your proposal. You need to set up to whom you want the proposal to go, add items, select a layout and content, and send off for approval. We will go through each of the steps below.

The first section of a proposal requires a Proposal title and a company. You can also associate a parent company or agency with the proposal.

You can select a pending order from the Build From Order selection. Selecting an order will build out the pricing sections from line items you already added to the order. What orders are available will depend on if you associate an agency or parent company.

You can choose if you want to display a table of contents section, or terms and conditions in your proposal template. You can always come back to this step when reviewing your layout.

Choose who you want to receive the proposal by selecting contacts in the Recipients field. You are also required to choose a primary contact for correspondence. This contact will be automatically selected as the primary contact for the order when the proposal gets converted. This can always be changed at a later date.

The Deadline field is for setting an expiration date on your proposal. A customer won’t be able to sign a proposal after the deadline date. The proposal status will go to expired; you won’t be able to edit the proposal after it is expired, but you can clone it and set a new deadline date.

Associate your opportunities with a proposal to move items along your sales pipeline.

You must select a Confidences Level to weight the value of a proposal for your forecast reports. Proposal line items can display in snapshot and production reports, but they will NOT have tickets until they are accepted and converted to an order.

The pricing section is where you can enter all the line item. The entering process works the same as any other order. You can add print, digital, and service line items.

Proposals do not have some of the options that order has, such as marking items for pre-pay. After you enter your items, move on to your layout.

You can select from any active templates to start your layout. Selecting a template will automatically add sections and elements to the page. The system will also auto-select the contract template. At this point, you can add/edit elements and sections.

If you don’t select a template, you must at least select a contract template. The proposal price table will use the same item tables as your contract template. The system also needs the template for converting the proposal to an order.

You can upload an external file as your proposal layout. Attach the document in the proposal email, but the customer won’t be able to interact with the template in the client center.

You should still add a price table so a customer has a way to approve the proposal.

If you include the Client Initials element, the customer will need to sign off on the chosen sections of the proposal before they can approve the proposal as a whole from within the Client Center.

The billing section allows you to add notes to the bottom of the order, a purchase order number, select a payment method, and add any special billing notes. If you have a payment method on file, the system can auto-bill the customer when an invoice is due.

On the review and send page, you will either have to submit a proposal for approval or you can submit to a client; it depends on your order approval configuration. If your setting is set to No, all proposal must be approved. If it is set to Publisher, you can immediately send the proposal to your customer.

When you submit to a customer, the proposal will automatically show in their client center. You can also choose to send an email and include a PDF attachment.

Save as Draft if you are not ready for your customer to view the proposals.

There are multiple tabs on a proposal overview page that show different information and allow you to perform different actions. Below, we will go over each of the tabs and what you can do on each.

The information tab shows the basics about the proposal, including the name and the client the proposal was created for. You can also edit the proposal from this page (depending on where the proposal is in the workflow), can view or download the proposal PDF, and can clone it to create an identical proposal.

This page also shows recipient information as well as the proposal status, so you can see if it was sent to the client or is waiting on internal approval, for example.

The proposal page displays the proposal layout, similar to the ‘Review and Send’ step of creating the proposal. You will be able to flip through each element that you added to the layout, such as a table of contents, the pricing table, or the gallery, for instance.  

The proposal can also be submitted to the client from this page.

Depending on your system configurations and user permissions, you may be able to approve or decline the proposal from this page on the client’s behalf.

Shown in a table format, the Analytics tab displays the actions the proposal has gone through, who it was performed by, and when. For example, you may see that the proposal was sent to the client by a particular user.

The Discussion page allows you to communicate with your clients about the proposal. You can post comments about the proposal that your client can see in their client center when viewing the proposal, and they can respond. This provides you with a quick and easy way to get feedback from your client about the proposal.

Very similar to the Discussion tab, the Internal Notes page allows you to communicate with your team internally about the proposal. Whereas your clients will see comments posted in the discussion, comments posted in the Internal Notes will only be seen by your team members.

If a proposal is declined, it cannot be edited and resubmitted to the client.

The easiest next step to take would be to clone the proposal and make the suggested changes. Then, you can submit this new, cloned proposal to the client for approval again.

On this page, you will see the price table containing the proposal line items. You will also be required to set order level contacts. No matter what, a primary contact is required to create the order. The primary contact is automatically set to whoever you chose as the ‘Primary Contact for Correspondence’ when creating the proposal, but it can be changed. Depending on your system configurations, you may also be required to set a Billing and/or Artwork contact for the order, or these fields may be optional.

Once you have entered the required information, click ‘Finalize.’ You will get a success message that the proposal was converted, with a button to view the order.

Each order that is converted from a proposal will become a pending order, automatically Client Approved. It will still need Finance Approval to become a fully approved order.