Create Your Quickbooks Estimate Template for Customer Service Effortlessly

Quickbooks estimate template for Customer Service

hi everyone welcome back to my YouTube channel now today I'm going to do another QuickBooks online tutorial and today I'm going to show you how to create an estimate or a quote and how to convert that estimate into an invoice so let me share my screen uh at this time okay all right so in QuickBooks online and just um just to let you know I'm using uh QuickBooks Online Essentials and I'm going to go over it step by step from starting with how to set up the customer how to set up the service item and then we'll go over uh designing the template for the estimate and for the invoice and then we'll do a test run of creating the actual estimate and converting it into an invoice okay so first of all let's go over how to create a customer and let's go to sales and let's click on customers now one thing about QuickBooks Online there are many ways to do many things so I may go to sales and um you know click it and then go here to the customers tab or you can go straight to sales and then just go to customers and you'll end up to the same place but here we are at the customer how to create a new customer here at the screen so let's just create a new customer new customer and I'm going to put in um you know put in some put in a name let's call this uh let's call it just Jan dop callor Jan do and let's say she works for um you know let's say Airline Airline Services let's say that's her company's name Airline Services Limited okay and let's say her email is um just assuming all of this is pretty hypothetical of course J Ando at um JN do.com all right and let's see you can put a phone number um you know at based on your choice and also with the website um mobile number and if they have a fax number but that's all on your choice for their information and let's assume she lives on um you know fruit Fruit Street M and I'll assume she lives in the United States so let's say she lives in West Palm Beach in the State of Florida um I'm not too sure of the ZIP code but um let's just assume a 334 and in the United States so here you set up the customer information once you feel all is correct just click save and there you see Jan do her company name airlin Services Limited and her billing information okay now when we get to creating the estimate we will come back to the screen when we get to the estimate and the invoice you will see of course transactions occurring for her but this is just to this shows you that the customer name is set up and the next step we will go to is how to create the actual item service item that you going to seller her so let's go here to the they call it the gear icon let's click here and let's go to products and services now again there are many ways to get to this um to the item list you can go here or you know to um make it more simple you can go back to sales go back to products and services and it's the same screen and you see it's interchangeable you can go you know where you need to go customers estimates and so forth so product products and services and let's click uh new and let's just make this a service just to keep it simple and let's assume you're selling her um let's say we're selling her just Consulting we'll keep it real simple today consulting services and you can put that same thing in the description oops copy and paste and assuming it's um you know $1,000 or whatever whatever service it is that you may be may be selling um you can set up the name the description the price and we'll just make it easy and leave it to the sales income account and we'll save and close and there you see the item has been created um I want to create another item but I want to create a discount item but I'm going to do that when we do the actual um invoice um because that's something too you should understand if you're giving a customer a discount on a service and you wanted to show on the estimate or the invoice I will show you how how to make sure that shows up on the screen now the next step we will go to setting up the template or the design of the estimate or the quote so let's go back to the gear icon and you will see in the First Column custom form Styles and let's click that okay now cookbooks online they give you a default design for pretty much um anything you want to do so you see you will see the standard template already there and but be you know instead of using that you can still use that for your estimates and invoices but I want to show you how you can actually create your own style or your own template of the estimate so let's go to new style estimate and here we have the uh screen or the design that they have already have for you and with all of these options they allow you to change the fonts the um the colors the design the setup um also other wording in the in the estimate okay now first of all let's change this let's change this name of the template and we'll call it new estimate template on new estimate design M okay okay so if we stay on the same um screen let's just browse through what each uh option it has so it has these different styles the AR new it has that style if you click the next one click the Martin style I think the Martin is most um most popular and you have this style fres the bowl style and a more friendly style m now any of these will be your choice so let's just go with the modern for now and let's go to the next one make logo edits now I want you to know that based on the logo when you initially set up your QuickBooks company you would have most likely put a logo in there and in designing your new templates it allows you to show your logo on your invoices and estimates so we'll just click show logo and here it has the logo of the company and let's see try other colors you know you can choose any other color um a deeper color burgundy color pink color green color so forth let's go back to the original um I think that was it right which one was it um let go back to this I think I don't think that was the original but let's choose this color and even your fonts you can choose many fonts um you can choose the aial 10o font and it also gives you the option to print it so let's say so far you want to see how it looks you have the option to print and you can see what it looks like before you um complete the complete the template so let's just just go to content now here where you see it it's actually divid it into three parts it's this first part the middle and the bottom and where you see these pencil icons it allows you to make several um or whatever changes that you need to make so we have first of all the company name which is your company you can include the company phone number you can include the company email address or not so when I click check the box it shows up when I don't check the box it doesn't show up but I'll I'll leave the check I'll leave the Box checked your address and you cannot show the address if you want to just look here how the template is changing when I click and uncheck these boxes and with the website if you have a website we'll just assume your website is w. test comp.com and you can see here this is what it looks like okay and in terms so if this is satisfactory to you you can actually just move forward you know the form name now some persons associate the word estimate with quotation so I you can actually change it to quote and you see it changes or quotation you know whatever you choose or you can leave it to estimate here okay form numbers what this means is the numbers QuickBooks of course would automatically select the number of the estimate or the invoice for you so here you can put um estimate number you can have it in or not have it in or you can select custom transaction numbers or not use custom or not use custom transaction numbers so if we untick this use custom transaction numbers yeah I would say take that part because you want to allow QuickBooks to um automatically generate these numbers for you now of course depending on your business you can select um tick the box if you want to and you can put your own invoice number or your own estimate numbers in there you know maybe the numbers has to be uniform with a letter or some other um some other symbol but this is an option for you to either choose to custom ciz the number or not to choose and here we can it shows you will show the shipping um address if that's necessary or expiration of the invoice expiration so if it expires a certain date excuse me the estimate I said invoice if it expires a certain day you can put that in there or if not you can leave that off of the estimate and here we have the next part of the estimate with the dates you can choose to leave the dates and this is the body of the estimate which your customer or potential customer will be looking at in terms of what they will be built for so you can leave the date and look at how this changes when um we untech or take the box so I will untick that for now now of course you want to show the product or service they're being built for so here we will leave the item name we will leave the description um if it's relevant to your business you don't have to include quantity you can exclude that include or exclude and the rate depending on how you what what do you want your customer to see the rate or just the amount so I unticked rate quantity and date so this is how the body of the estimate will look like and here we have um this here discount now I want to show you something else I will untick this for now but this can be applicable depending on what you want to show on the invoice or on the estimate but I will untick this for now and show you another way to show um the discount you're offering your customer and any messages you have for them in the event you have to put your bank details you can you can put it right here let's just say send or see below our bank transfer information and then you would have um BC Bank you know the address bank account oops let's change that um uh account number you know and so forth okay so here you will see in the invoice it will show up as that if that's what you wanted to if if that's what you want to show on each and every estimate or invoice and you can change the font size to a bigger size and let's see and you can even have another footer say thank you for your business okay and this last tab for emails this is in the event you are emailing directly from QuickBooks and um instead of downloading it as a PDF and Manu manually emailing it from your address you can just go in and email straight from QuickBooks and here you can actually amend or change whatever details you need to change so here it has full details PDF attached and you can call this um quote you know whatever you want to call it quote from test company or whichever you choose but we'll put it back to estimate and here you have the the greeting the customer name will be default based on the customer you are doing the estimate for and your message to the customer um this is what QuickBooks allow you to um well they standard messaging but of course you can change this in any way you can even put um other information Bank info so forth have a great day you can put um C bonab CEO test company and here you will see it all amends it all changes okay all right so just once again you can go to design [Music] and to your contents and emails to pretty much customize how you want the estimate to look and let's go to the bottom here and click done to the bottom left bottom right sorry so at the bottom right you click done and there you will see your new estimate template was created I will refresh this page okay so there we have the new estimate design now we can outo a invoice design real quickly it is the same process and of course quickbus gives you its own standard format of an invoice and we will still include the logo if you want to do a different color this time and a different font and also change of the template okay let's do a different font let's let's go back to times Roman okay and let's go to content however you want to change the content let's say you uh want to yes keep all of the information that they have here let's say you want to untick a few things you just leave due date let's say you want to add shipping and if we go to the email information or email format you can change whatever it is this you can just call this invoice from Test Company because it had payment request okay so and we will click at the bottom right click done all right and here we have new estimate design and my invoice template and we can even change the name of that um rename it new new invoice design say went to edit and you can rename or even still make other changes okay now let's finally go to the customers and we will do an invoice and and convert it into we will create an estimate and then convert it into an invoice so let's go to customers and here the new customer that we created it was J and do and once we see the information was already set up we can go to the options that QuickBooks already allows you to select go click the arrow and let create estimate okay now here it has already the customer information set up as of today's date you can put the expiration date you know this quote will expire a month from now shipping if it has shipping information you can put it in and if you choose to select a service date you can select today's date the date of the invoice and the product or service and there you will see the Consulting Services which we set up initially and it has the description and here you can always add other description other information such as um for the dates April 1 to 7th 202 mhm and let's say you did you know probably three hours of consultation at a ,000 and here you will see how it populates the amount of the quotes at the bottom 3000 and here you will see even here the message where it has the bank information for your customer to look at now as I said I want to show you how to create how to add a discount in the body of the invoice and here we can just do a new item and it is you can call it invo uh service we'll call it discounts copy and paste that won't be I would I won't put a price or rate for the discount and we'll just leave it we'll leave it here for now because if you're accounting if once your chart up accounts are set up properly then it should be mapped properly to the correct account but we will just leave it as is just for just for this video today to keep it simple okay and we'll save and close and here you have the discount and if you want to add any further information let's say employee discount and let's say a discount you're taking off um $500 and there the invoice po the estimate populates to $2500 now to see how this looks let's do a print or preview well first of all let's go to the bottom here customize and here it defaults to The Standard Version QuickBooks Online gives you but let's select the new estimate design we did we'll select that and we will print preview so we'll just look at it and here is how that estimate will look now of course you know depending on what you how you feel how you feel it um how it appears you can always go back to that original template and make the all the changes you need to to make the look of the estimate look the way you want it to so I'll close this or if we were to choose the standard version that QuickBook gave us see I will go back to the standard click standard print or preview and this is the QuickBooks Online standard version of the estimate and let's say you were to download you can download here download as a PDF and email it manually to your client or your prospective client okay and let's go to the bottom right and here you see the option save and new save and close close or save and send you can email your estimate directly from QuickBooks that will save you an extra step or of course you don't have to and just save and close I will save and close so if we click on this customer jando if you click in their customer in that customer name you will see that the estimate has been created and it says pending of course because it's still pending to be accepted or close to an invoice and again we will look at this and you can still make changes so I clicked in you can go to the bottom right click edit and you can still go back and make changes as needed I will click the X to this screen now in in order to make this uh a an invoice so if the customer has chosen to accept the quote and they are ready for the service it's very easy how to make it make it into an invoice you will just go here and convert to invoice so that is a step that QuickBooks Online I would say um pretty much a pretty a fairly new feature that they introduced and both QuickBooks online and QuickBooks desktop which makes it very easier for business owners to um create an estimate and if the customer agrees to those terms to just easily convert that same quote into an invoice so here is the invoice let's look at it in our new design and let's print a pre say preview and of course this is the uh design that I originally chose for this invoice now again you can always go back to that original template and make changes however you feel looks better for your business or if we were to choose the standards style and that's preview that's okay and this is the standard style that QuickBooks Online would have given you when creating an invoice okay and again it gives you the option to save and send you can email directly from QuickBook or if not you can just save and close and there you have it this is the how you create an estimate and convert it into an invoice for this customer so there you will see Jane do the estimate and it even says converted and you will see the invoice was created and it has all of the relevant information now just to see where it really all goes on the financial report just to show you I will go to reports and let's just let's just select the sales um sales summary a sales report sales by customer summary and let's look for J Ando and there's the 2500 and um there's the transaction that happened for her and you can still go in from here and make any changes that you need to make I just wanted to show you this so that you know that all of that uh did you know really did um affect the financial report or the sales report um in QuickBooks so once you do that transaction it really does um behind the scenes add to your profit and loss income or to your sales income in QuickBooks okay all right and I will leave it here for today so again those are the steps on how to create an estimate and converted you must first create the customer create the product or service you're selling and then you can set up your template styles for the estimate and invoice and then once that's done you can go ahead and create your estimate and convert it to an invoice all right so thanks so much for tuning in today I hope that was helpful for you and feel free to subscribe to my YouTube channel I will be doing more tutorials of of QuickBooks online and if any comments that you have or anything that you want to learn about QuickBooks online or about accounting for your business feel free to leave a comment and also leave a like button if you felt that this was helpful for you today and until next time I will see you in my next video bye