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Creating an Estimate from a Lead or Inquiry
Creating an Estimate from a Lead or Inquiry

How to respond to an inquiry or lead by sending an estimate for approval

Billy Webb avatar
Written by Billy Webb
Updated over a week ago

In this tutorial you will learn how to create an Estimate from an already existing lead.

Locate the Lead or Inquiry and open it in the document viewer

Click the 'Create Proposal' button shown below

Note: Although you can use the 'Show Menu' button to create your estimate, the 'Create Proposal' button is provided as a shortcut that automatically clones the document for you, reducing your time spent creating an estimate. If you are yet to encounter the 'Cloning' process please refer to our tutorial How to Clone (copy) Documents for Easier Document Creation.

The 'Create Proposal' screen shown below will open.

All of the basic information from the lead has been collected and copied into the estimate draft.

Change any information that may be different having processed the Lead

Note: The summary often needs to be amended having been processed from Lead form to Estimate form.

In this example the summary has been copied over from the customer's online inquiry which needs to be edited. 

Note: Make use of the summary text box for any details that are not featured in Tudodesk's Estimate template.

The summary box supports the Markdown formatting language, allowing you to send your documents in an organized and professional format. For more information on the Markdown language, consult the Markdown Cheatsheet.

Copying Attachments 

Tudodesk automatically collects any attachments for the Lead that have been used and presents them for use in the estimate. 

Select or deselect the blue tick shown below to attach or leave out the file respectively

Tip: It is a healthy business practice to attach relevant images to estimates to re-affirm to customers the subject and parameters of the estimate.

Click the 'Create deal' button to produce an estimate

The pop-out shown below will ask if you want to archive the source document.

Tip: Archiving documents removes them from your board, you will still be able to view them in the specific project or by using the document search function. Archiving documents after you are finished with them stores them away safely, and helps in maintaining a healthy business practice. 

Click OK to archive the document

The document will now appear in the document viewer so we can complete editing and send it to the customer for approval.

Note: Tudodesk references the source document (the Lead) in the 'Our ref' box on the new document shown below.

Clicking on the document reference takes you back to your original document, in this instance the original lead. You can use the browser back arrow to return to the original document.

The reference numbers make it easy for agents and customers to understand the origin of documents that are further along the project life-cycle.

The next step in processing an estimate is to add charges to the estimate, which you can learn how to do in our Adding products, services and charges to documents tutorial.

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