Streamline Your Workflow with Proposal Contract Software for Accounting

Proposal contract software for Accounting

so awesome so the number one thing to start off with proposals is we're going to go over the proposal basics what do proposals do and it'll be really tough to get in a grasp on how you can use proposals effectively if you're not sure of what proposals can actually do for you so we're going to cover some of those basics first so the first thing we'll talk about is what proposals do from a functionality standpoint and what proposals are designed to do they're responsible for pitching your services or your scope of work so that's on the very basic level that's what proposals are designed to do is to pitch your prosser your your your services or your products or your scope of work to your clients that's what they're designed to do and so the first thing we'll talk about our packages because packages are going to go on to proposals and packages and proposals are connected so the very first thing I want to talk about today before we actually get into proposals is setting up your packages so that you can create your packages first before jumping into a proposal and you're setting up your packages effectively so let's jump into the packages here and we're gonna go through a couple of these things here we're going to give you some examples of packages so that you can understand how you should frame these and your packages if you're newer to Dobbs ato are going to be anything that you have product wise or service wise that has a price point attached to it so as you can see here I have you know some different web design level packages or some engagement photoshoot level packages if you have add-ons those are created as packages in the system anything that has a price point that you want to attach that's going to be what a package is in the system so it can be a variety of things and I want it to give you some examples so you can understand how to structure your packages in the right way and I am a food lover and so what I'm going to explain when it comes to how you can think about using your packages is I'm gonna break it down here with the some of these that I have down here at the bottom so I'm gonna give you an example of how you can think about packages and I'm going to use the example of a homestyle dinner if you are going to a restaurant and you are gonna go get a homestyle dinner this is how you would break down your packages so let's just say that I offer a homestyle dinner to my client and so if I open this up how you can break down your packages is in a couple different ways the first way is you can title your package whatever you would like it to be called but how packages are broken down is with different line items that go inside of that package so in this case I only have one line item and the description of that line item is what that client is getting and so you can set it up this way where you basically say hey this is what the package is and this is how it's broken down is in the description if you don't want to itemized all the things that they're getting inside that package so as you can see homestyle dinner this is what you get with it and this is the overall price point so that's one way that you can break it down is you just have one line item in that package and everything that they get within that line item is within the description there so that's one way of doing it another way of doing it is where you're actually going to Ida Mize out everything that they're getting and broken down by price point so this is the same thing the same type of package but as you can see here it's broken down by a line item if you're doing it this way every single line item you have will have a price point attached to it as you can see so you have to decide on if you're going to offer a package is it more where you just have one line item and everything is in the description or do you want to have it where it's one package but everything is itemized out with a price point next to it if you do it this way there is not a way for a client to choose each individual line item if you're adding this to a proposal and I'm going to show you how you do that next but this is a way that if they did choose I want this package every line item that's underneath here they would get in that package so that's another way that you can do a package if you want the itemised out where you want them to be able to choose these almost like sides if you will like add-ons then what you would do actually is you would create all of these as individual packages so I have let's say a chicken package or a corn package so you would break them down as different packages if you want them where they're all individual packages or to be able to select to be selected individually so you the first thing before you get into proposals if you're planning on taking packages and putting them on the proposal think about which one of these examples fits best do you want them where they're all individual packages and they can choose them individually do you want where it's more of an itemized list of everything they're getting with price points attached to every single one or do you want to set up where it's more of just one line item as you can see here but really the description is what goes in there so those are kind of the different examples of how you can set up your packages in Dobbs Otto and the best thing you can do is just sit down look at what services or products you offer and figure out which one best fits your business so that's a quick crash course on packages and the reason that I want to start with packages is because really what your packages are as you can kind of see here is they're really like the food items on a menu and your menu is going to be your proposal that you give to the client to say hey this is what I have to offer what is it that you would like from this so that's just a quick crash course on on packages because packages go with proposals in Dobbs Otto those two things go hand in hand and you usually want to set up their packages first before jumping into proposals the next thing with proposal basics the submission of a proposal is what creates an invoice in Dobbs Otto so how the proposals are designed is really to be like an order form where you can send out your proposal to a client saying hey this is what I have to offer when the client makes their selections on that proposal and they submit it that automatically generates an invoice in their project based off of what the chose on that proposal so you can kind of think about a proposal as sort of like a brochure that's a selectable brochure where they can go in and pick the things that they're interested in that's one way of doing proposals and we'll get into some other options later but primarily that's going to be what the proposals designed to do they go through they make their selections and then an invoice gets generated in their project based off of their selections so that's another thing a very basic thing with proposals and then the other thing too as well as you can connect a contract and an invoice to the proposal and so let me jump over to proposals now so we can take a look at one here so you can get an understanding of what you can do with them so like I said previously the packages are going to go with the proposal and so when you're building forms in Dobbs Otto these are the different elements that you can use to build your forms and with the proposals as you can see here there's a package element and that package element is exclusive to proposals you can't put packages on any other forms so if you do have packages that you want your client to select then you'll have to use a proposal in that case so that's why I like to say packages go with proposals so with this package what you can do is you can click and drag and you can add packages onto your form and you can customize this and build it how you would like it so how I have this set up here is you can kind of see is I have it where it says you know choose one main package they're kind of choosing their different options that they want is their main package if there's any add-ons that they want they can select from those you don't have to go with the the three-tier process you can customize these however you want them to be if you offer you know ten different packages with you know 15 add-ons you can go in and add in all those different packages so you're gonna customize this proposal to fit the different services that you want to offer for those of you who do more of a quote based business aisle beginning to you guys in just a little bit but this is kind of the the main reason that you would use a proposal is for package selection but with the contract and invoice what you can do is in the settings menu up here at the top if we click on that this is going to give you the ability to add in a contract and also show the invoice that gets created from the proposal so once a proposal gets submitted the invoice is in their project only on the back end so the client doesn't have access to that invoice quite yet it's only in their project where you can see it in the settings menu this is where you can say I would like the client to be able to see the invoice so that they can make a payment so the proposal contract and invoice can all be tied together in the settings menu so that means you can pitch your pricing have the client sign and have the client pay all upfront and so what I want to do here is before we move on I want to show you what that looks like so you can see what it looks like live so let me go into one of my projects here I have just a test project that I'm going to use and what I'll do is I'll go to the forms area and I'm going to add in the package proposal here so let's see package proposal and then we'll click Add and what I'm going to do here is I'm going to open this up in a private window so that you guys can see this you should be able to see this hopefully let me know in all it looks like it's not showing up there so let me do this here really quickly let me just open this up normally and that should show there okay perfect so this is gonna be the client view so it's not exactly how a client or this is gonna be the business owner view so it's not exactly how the client would see it but just so you can get an idea of what you're going to do when you combine these three things you'll have proposal contract and invoice so this ties in everything together in a really great sequence that you can send out to your clients so if you have this here you can say okay I really want to do the bronze package they can make their selections on here down at the bottom you can see where it's going to total up the different things that they're selecting there in the client view there will be a submit button right next to this so the client can click on that and then it will take them automatically to the contract so once they click Submit on this proposal its then going to create an invoice just on the backend and then when they get to the contract portion they're able to go in they can read through all of your terms and conditions and then at the very bottom they can go ahead and sign on that contract and then they can click Submit and then it will take them to the invoice where it's going to show the invoice that gets created so this sequence works really well if you want to just picture pricing to a client let them sign and then let them pay a deposit or pay in full however you would like that to happen so one thing I have in here is even if you only need a client to do a contract and an invoice and that's all you really need them to do think about adding a proposal to your process even if it's just for aesthetics because the sequencing of everything is much simpler for the client so there's two different types of ways that you can do proposals there's more package based which is what I just showed you there it's where the client is really going to build that invoice based off of the different things that you offer and then there's also quote based and so understanding your pitching process or understanding how you deliver your services to a client and let them choose what they're interested in or basically show them what you're going to do for them you can use the proposal for both and so even if you're in a business where you say well I just really have them do an invoice and sign a contract I don't really have like a quote or anything like that really think about adding that into your business process because as you can see here it makes it really easy for the client to be able to go through those three things and if you are just doing a contract and invoice you're not able to do these tabs across the top the proposal is really what ties everything in together to give you that great sequence and so if you're doing a quote based we'll get into that here and a second but I want to talk about the difference between a package based proposal and a quote based proposal so you can understand the difference between the two package based proposals and let me just jump back to my proposal here so package based proposals are going to revolve around set packages with a fixed price point now there are ways that you can add a proposal into a project and then edit that proposal before it goes out to a client there's ways to do that and I'll show you that here in just a little bit but it's really gonna be where you want the client to build their own invoice that's really the mentality that you can have going into a package based proposal I want to send out my services or my products I want my client to go ahead and pick what they want and that's going to generate the invoice so they're basically building their own invoice this will most likely be the case if there has been no discussion ahead of time about what the client is interested in beforehand now there are cases where you can set it up if you've had a discussion but typically it's going to be where a client inquires about your services you send them out of proposal and you let them pick what they're interested in that will be probably 75 80 percent of the case there is going to be where you send out a proposal with they're not really being any discussion on what the client is interested in so that's a package based proposal a quote based proposed based proposal will revolve around creating a custom scope of work for each client so every time that you're working with a client it's going to be different every single time and we're gonna get into that here in a second on how you can do quote based proposals quote based proposals and this is going to revolve more around the business owner will basically build the invoice for the client they're going to be setting the scope of work for the client to see when they get the proposal so that's kind of the main difference between the two is really with a quote based proposal the business owner is kind of setting that scope of work and what they're planning on doing for the client and then sending it to the client so this will most likely be if there's been a consultation about what the client is interested in beforehand so this is gonna be where you're on the phone with somebody or they're filling out a questionnaire so that you can get an idea of what they're interested in and then you're going to build a scope of work to then send to the client so let's talk about that here and we do have some examples here and we're kind of following along with this already we've already talked about the package based proposal and so let's get into the quote like proposal and this is kind of the first option and this will be mainly if you're wanting to have an invoice get generated still after they submit it so let me show you how to do that here if we go into the proposal I'll pull up my first option and this is going to be where you're going to have an empty package element on the proposal and there's not going to be anything tied to this proposal it's going to be just a basic empty element and what you're going to do is add it is that you're going to add this to a project and then once it's in the project you're gonna make your customizations within that project so let me show you what that looks like so really what I did was I just took a package element I drug it on to this proposal and I left it empty so I have my custom quote based proposal and now if I go into a project I can then go to that will go to that same test project here and we'll pop in here and we'll jump in here and what you can do now with this is we'll go down to the quote like proposal and we'll open this up now if you're brand new to the basado this is great knowledge to have when you click Add on a form any form a contract questionnaire proposal when you click Add what that does is it takes that master template that we have in the templates area and it creates a copy and it adds it to this project so now if I click Edit on this proposal I am now only making customizations just to this proposal in this project I'm not messing with my master template anymore it's only within this project so if I go in here and I have my empty package element what I can do now is I can click in here and I can either create a brand new package that's never been used before that's never been created I can select from all of my packages which one I want to start with is just a base so let's say here I want to add in my homestyle dinner and so we'll add that in there and once I've added that in there what I can do now is I can click Edit and I can make changes oops my fault let me go back in here and click Edit there we go so I can go in here and I can click Edit on this package and I can make customizations to this without affecting any of my master templates so I've basically added in something that I can create just from scratch or if it's a package that I just want to edit change the price point on all of that good stuff I can make changes to this and then I can click apply and then I can close out and this will only be for this particular client this will only be a quote for them or I can go in and let's say that I want to select maybe a different package I can put in maybe a few different you know separate options for them so if I wanted to add a couple different packages for them to select from to build their own invoice that's completely custom you can do that as well another thing that you can do is is if you want to give them a proposal where you don't want them to click that select button because you already talked to them beforehand what you can do is you can pre-select this package so it's already selected when they receive it and then what you can do is you can actually get rid of this select button entirely so there's no way that they can unclick that select button because obviously if you discussed beforehand this is what we're planning on doing for you you don't want them to say you know yes or no or uncheck that select button because that's what you discussed so by pre selecting it and removing that select button now becomes a quote where when they receive this it's already pre-selected there's no way they can unselect it and what they'll do to basically create that invoice is they will click the submit button that will be at the bottom and it'll have the total at the bottom based off of what you talked about so that's a way that you can create a custom proposal for a client and that will be completely custom for every person like I said when you add this to a project it creates a copy of your master template which means you only really need one template and then when you add it to a project you'll really customize it once you get in there so with your master templates just kind of create a shell of what you normally do and then when you go into a project that's where you can really make your customizations so this option here what this does for you is the invoice will get created after the submission because again this is a package technically but it's completely custom for each client this is the recommended way that we usually recommend doing this the reason why is because with this option there's not going to be an invoice that gets created beforehand because you don't really know if you're going to be working with them and I'll explain why with this with this third option which is the quote like proposal option - so that's one way of doing it the other way of doing it is if we go back to the forms here is where you're going to create an invoice beforehand before you send them the proposal and what you're going to do is you're going to add in a text box into your proposal and if we click into this what you can do is you can add invoice smart fields to display invoice information before you'll basically create the invoice before you send out this proposal and this proposal is going to grab that invoice information and display it on the proposal for the client say yes this looks great I think this is this will work for me so this is where you're going to do the invoice first and then send out the proposal the other option is where you're going to just do a custom package and then upon submission that creates the invoice so if we go to the outline here basically there's two ways to do a quote like proposal you can either do it where the invoice will get created after the submission so you don't have a lot of open invoices or you can do it where you create the invoice first and then have that go on to the proposal so if you're doing this option here what you'll actually do is if you go into a project and we'll go back to that same project here what you'll actually do is you'll create the invoice first so you'll come into this invoice section here and let's add in a few packages so let's do we'll just do a couple things here we'll add in a package we'll add in a few add-ons we'll put these in there and once you've created your invoice first what you would do is you would go to the form section and you would grab that quote like proposal and what it's going to do is it's going to read what you've already done well that was a wrong one here let me grab that oh that's not showing up there one second here let me remove some of this and it should populate pull that up here not sure why that's not pulling in my apologies but what it should do for you because it should pull in the information from that invoice I might have done something wrong here my there we go so and it will pull in what's already on that invoice so you create your invoice ahead of time and then when you go to send out this quote it's going to look at the invoice that you've created and it's just going to plug it in to this particular invoice so if you want to do it where it's this style where they're not really creating an invoice from that proposal it's kind of the opposite you're doing the invoice first and then having a display on the proposal what you'll actually do is on that form if we go back to this form here in this text box what you're going to use is you're going to use invoice smart fields to display information from that invoice that you've created and the ones that I use to get that same look and feel is the invoice item names and amounts and then also you can use the invoice total and that will put the total of the invoice on there so there's basically two ways that you can do it you can do it where it's a custom package in a way and then that creates an invoice or you do it where it's the invoice first and then have that show on the proposal with these options what we recommend is the first way of doing it the reason why is because if you create the invoice beforehand and then put it on a proposal what we've noticed is that on the dashboard it's going to have all of these invoices that haven't been paid and it will stack up in your open invoice area so if you don't want an invoice to get created until they accept the quote do it the first way where you do it the custom package route if you already know they're gonna be working with you and you want to do that second way you can do it on like that and then that will it'll still do the invoice first where you have the open invoices but then once they pay then it will take care of it so you can kind of decide which way you want to go with that and then the last thing is public proposals and with the public proposal that's going to be where you can take a proposal and you can embed it on your website so a client can make selections from your website and then have that generate an invoice and create a project in dibs on oh so this is where it's really more of kind of like e-commerce where you have your services or your products on your website and the client can pick packages from your website the same rules apply as far as bringing your packages in the exact same rules apply except what you'll need to do here is you'll actually have to add in the ability for them to put their first name last name and email on the form and you can do that by adding short answer elements to the proposal so they'll still make their selections but we have to be able to collect their contact information so Dobbs Otto knows how to create a project and who to put the client with when that project gets created so at the very minimum what you'll need is three things a spot for first name last name and email all three have to be required as you can see here I have them required and they have to map to the correct area so you have to have one for first name one for last name and one for email so on this last name one I have one there and for the email one I have one for email and they all have to be required so that's very important you have to have that on there in order to do a public proposal where it's going to be embedded on your website once you have that done if we scroll up to the top this share button on the proposal will now be activated and the other thing you'll need to do as well to make sure of is in the settings menu on your proposal if we scroll down right here where it says create a new project when the proposal is completed you'll want to say yes on that so that means that once they fill out that proposal on your website it would then create a new project in Dobbs Otto where the proposal and the invoice will be stored so you have to say yes on there so that doves Otto knows okay this is a public proposal we're actually going to create a project from this once you've done that if you click Share you can then grab this iframe code plug that into your web builder and then this proposal will be embedded on your website so people can go there and book and create their invoice directly from your website and then that will create them in Dobbs Otto with that proposal and invoice in the system and contract if you want to add that in there so that's going to be basically the four different types of proposals that we have there's a lot of different common nations that you can do so those are kind of the four foundational ways but you can always do really custom ways of doing it and use your creativity to kind of combine a lot of those different areas that we talked about today but primarily those are gonna be the four ways that you can use proposals in Dobbs Otto and again really quickly before I open it up for questions I'll highlight this again even if you only need the client to sign a contract and pay an invoice really think about adding that proposal into the mix because that sequencing makes it so much easier for the client even if on your proposal all you have is just a body of scope of work and that's all that it shows on there you can add some pictures in there put your logo on there even if it's just very basic just think about adding that in there because then you can tie in that contract and invoice to really give that smooth sequence for the client so think about adding that in there if you don't want to use it you don't have to obviously but the proposal really kind of gives a good aesthetic look to your business so the client can see the scope of work very clear they can sign the contract and then pay the invoice at the end