Your first estimate
An estimate is the quote. The customer gets it by email, approves it from their portal, and the accepted estimate becomes the invoice with one click. Nothing is typed twice.
You need a customer with an email, and it’s much faster with services in your catalog so prices fill themselves in.
Creating it
Estimates → New estimate
Click Estimates in the sidebar, then New estimate. This opens the billing studio: line items in the middle, a live preview on the right, and a readiness rail that says what’s still missing.
Choose the customer and property
Pick the customer; their property, payment terms and tax rate come with them.
Add the line items
Start typing in a line to search your service catalog. Pick a service and its price, unit and taxability fill in. Enter starts the next line. A detail line under each item is what the customer reads, so “Mow & edge” becomes “Mow, edge, blow walks, clippings bagged”.
Read the rail
Ready to send? on the right is a checklist: customer, priced line items, an email on file, deposit if you ask for one. Underneath, When you hit send says in plain words what’s about to happen. Read it once.
Review & Send
The send drawer shows the recipient, the subject and message, and whether to attach a PDF and request a signature. Send now emails it. The estimate moves from Draft to Sent.
Not ready to send? Close the studio. The estimate is saved as a Draft and sits in the list until you come back.
What the customer does
The email carries a link. They open the estimate, read it, and press Approve Estimate or Decline. Approving can include a signature if you asked for one, and a deposit if you require one. You get a notification either way.
The statuses
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Draft | Saved, not sent. |
| Sent | Emailed; waiting on the customer. |
| Viewed | They opened it. |
| Accepted | Approved. Ready to convert. |
| Declined | They said no. |
| Expired | Past its validity window, set under Settings → Company → General → Defaults. |
| Converted | It became an invoice. |
Turning it into an invoice
Open the accepted estimate and press Convert to Invoice. Line items and tax carry over; you set the due date. Or press New job to put the work on the calendar first and invoice when it’s done. See Your first job.
Tips
- Send a follow-up, don’t resend. Send Follow-up on a sent estimate nudges without creating a second copy.
- Three prices beat one. The studio can build Good/Better/Best tiers on one estimate; the customer picks, and the conversion uses the tier they chose.
- Switch the preview language before sending to a Spanish-speaking customer and read what they’ll read.
Troubleshooting
Send is greyed out. Something on the rail is red: usually no email on the customer, or no priced line. The rail says which.
The customer says the link is expired. Estimates stop being approvable after their validity window. Re-issue from the estimate page sends a fresh link.
Related
- The billing studio for the full editor
- Estimates for tiers, signatures and deposits
- Your first invoice