You can create & send price quotes to your clients in Kitchen. In this article, we'll describe how to use price quotes.
To create and post a quote:
go to the Quotes screen in your workspace
click on "Create a quote" button
Edit the quote
Save it via the "Save" button
Copy the shortcode at the top link
Go to the project where you'd like to post the quote
Paste the shortcode in your message
Send the message
Quote Syntax
Quotes consists of sections and items:
Sections group items and other sections together
Items are lines with concrete numbers
Sections
Sections are the building blocks for your quotes. They provide structure and separation for your quotes.
The syntax for creating a section is:
Section Title:
item here: 42
item 2 here: 42
The section title should end with semicolon(:). All sub-items / sub-sections indended with 4 spaces: the white space is significant because the quote hierarchy is based on it.
Following this convention allows you to work with big quotes and keeping good structure.
Items
Items are the billable entities in your quotes:
The values consist of arbitrary title, semicolon(:), and value
The title can be any text. If you'd like to include semicolon in it, just surround the whole title with quotes(either single or double quotes)
The semicolon is special syntax that specifies that the value for the item is after that
The value can be either a flat number in your workspace currency(e.g.
1500), or Excel-like formula to calculate whatever you'd like to quote. For example:40h=> 39 hours, billed to your default hourly rate40 * 60=> simple calculation, for example if you'd like to use specific hourly rate in this item
Additionally, you can set an item as included or excluded. This is done via the special true and false values. The true value will be rendered as a green tick box, and the false as a red cross.
Here is an example for that:
ACME Project:
Project Scope:
Design: 500
Development: 300
Additional commitments:
Technical Support for 12 months: true
Weekly database backups: true
Business hours email support: true
WordPress core upgrades: true
24/7 phone support: false
Items can also include additional description that will be rendered along with the item. You can include it by adding a quoted text after the value:
ACME Project:
WordPress: 3 * 248 + 12 * 40 "Development, hosting and support"
Quote Subtitle
When there are multiple quotes in single project, it is often nice to have subtitle for the quote. You can achieve that like this:
ACME Project:
_subtitle: Email Templates integration with Mailchimp
Design: 500
Development: 300
Subtitles are used as charge titles when the quote is accepted.
Variables
You can pre-define variables that you can use in your quotes. For example, you can have your hourly rate defined in a variable, and then use it in your quotes like this:
Project setup:
Create local development: 2 * hours
Create staging server: 3 * hours
Deploy to production: 1.5 * hours
Variables are defined in the following way:
Timeframes
Kitchen quotes are always presented with time-frame - business you would need in order to deliver the quoted work. By default, the timeframe is based on past quotes you have sent. However, you can configure the quotes manually like this:
Example Quote:
_options: standard(10)
Create local development: 2 * hours
Create staging server: 3 * hours
Deploy to production: 1.5 * hours
This quote will be fixed to 10 business days delivery(or 2 weeks):
Some important notes:
The delivery date will be based on the date of accepting the quote, rather than the date of creation; so if you create a quote with 5 business days timeframe on Monday, Aug 1st, send it to your client on Tuesday(Aug 2nd), and they accept it on Wednesday(Aug 3rd), the delivery date will be Wednesday, Aug 10th(1 week = 5 business days).
You can add additional non-business days in Kitchen settings, in the quoter settings
Kitchen will base delivery dates on your timezone usual business hours(9AM - 6PM)
Providing Multiple timeframe - pricing options
Some clients might request express delivery for their projects. For these cases, Kitchen allows you to provide variants of your quotes: faster and more expensive and slower and less expensive option.
In order to do that, you will need to first define the delivery option in Kitchen settings. You can do that by going to Settings > Quotes > Configure Pricing > Create a pricing option. Choose a name for your pricing option, e.g. "express". You will then need to define your variables so they have value for the express delivery option. For example, set the h variable to $60 for the "express" value.
Once you set the variables values, you will need to setup the turnaround schedule for the express delivery. Open the settings for the express pricing option and edit "Configure turnarounds". Add the turn arounds as you see fit - you basically need to say how many business days you need for a quote with particular amount. E.g. "10 business days => $1000" would mean that a quote with $1000 would automatically get 2 weeks delivery time.
Once you go through the initial setup, you will automatically get 2 delivery options for every new quote you create. You can control which delivery option to show on each quote by setting the _options: express to only enable one of the deliveries for each particular quote.
Discounts
You can include discounts in your quotes as percentages or flat amounts.
Example Quote:
_discounts:
Bulk Discount: 5%
Regular Client Discount: 20
Create local development: 2 * hours
Create staging server: 3 * hours
Deploy to production: 1.5 * hours
Flat amounts are always applied before the percentages; additionally, all percentage based discounts are summed before they're applied to the total.