You can create quotes in Xero. Quotes that things that usually tradies do, but it involves providing a potential customer with a price that a job would cost to do.

An example of when quote would be used is for a piano moving business. A person interested in getting their piano moved provides details e.g. how many steps there are in the house, from what suburb to what suburb the piano is getting moved, the type of piano e.g. grand, baby grand, upright etc…. Given all these details, you would then provide a quote. A quote isn’t guaranteed income, it’s just an offer of a job to be delivered at a certain price. The customer still has to accept it and the job has to be done.

Why should you track quotes in Xero? Better information for your business. Here are some reasons:

• If a quote is not accepted, you’ll record a reason e.g. “Price to high”. If you’re getting 20 quotes rejected each week and each one of those records the same reason being that your price is too high, perhaps lower the price (if still viable) and see if you can win that job.
• A quote records financial information - you can track quotes that turn into invoices and creating an invoice from a quote created in Xero is easy peasy - just press the “Create Invoice” button.
• You can email quotes directly from Xero to your potential customer and remember what you quoted them (instead of relying on memory).

Now here’s how you can create a quote in Xero:

1. Go to Accounts > Sales > Click the upside down triangle next to “+ New” and click “Quote”.
2. Fill in all the details for your quote. Revise how to invoice in Xero to complete the line items and tax exclusive/inclusive/no tax part under the “Amounts Are”.
3. Once completed, click “Send” to send off your quote to your customer. Fill in the details as requested and press “Send”.
4. Your quote has now been saved and sent to your customer.
5. You’ll wait to hear back from your customer, but if not, follow up with an email.
6. Then based on what your customer does, you’ll have to to go Accounts > Sales, then scroll down to the quotes section and click on the “Sent” quotes and click on the quote you want to update. If your customer:
   • Rejects the quote - Click on “Options” and then “Mark as Declined”.
   • Accepts the quote - Click on “Options” and then “Mark as Accepted”. Then Click “Create Invoice” and then follow the steps for creating an invoice, however, if your quote is correctly set up, all you have to do is just approve the invoice How easy is that! You just have to deliver the job and then get paid.
   • Does your client want to negotiate terms or their needs change? Then click on “Revise” and update the quote as needed. Then click “Update & Send”.

So that’s how you create quotes in Xero!