Guide to the Quote

Guide to the Quote Process
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Steps
1:
2:
3:
Creating the quote
Preparing the quote
Following up the quote
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1:
Creating the quote
Before you work through this process, you should be familiar with the first 22 pages of the
tutorial to learn some basic navigation, setting up customers and the basic manual method of
job entry. There is no need to get tied up with the section on Specification Masks (page
11/12) or Document Editing which has changed (page 13). Note that on page 16 and 20,
SPECIAL INSTRUCTIONS now appears as LONG DESCRIPTION in the Order Entry screen.
You should also be somewhat familiar with searching for items within XebraSource™- see email provided with tutorial software.
All Xebra quotes regardless of whether they are items in your Item File or items from
XebraSource should be processed through this module. For the purposes of this guide, we
will use MLI (Main Line Item) when referring to the item the customer will receive and
RLI (Related Line Item) for the processes required to produce the finished item.
There are 2 variants of this procedure – using an item that is supplied by a XebraSource™
supplier – XebraSource™Job Processing , and using an item that is not supplied within
XebraSource™ - Non XebraSource™Items.
To gain maximum efficiency from the Quote Matrix, it is advised that you enter your main
decorators cost pricing into your item file using the 8 quantity break Multi level pricing.
All the individual quote items in a Distributor quote (the quotes that you raise for your
customers) are stored as individual System Quotes. That enables processing a selection of
the quoted items but leaving the balance of the quoted items available for use later. It also
means that the full quote history is retained for all time.
In the cost matrix window for the quotation, your System Administrator is able to set a default
target margin for quotes and also on the Sales Rep file, able to set a minimum margin for
each rep. Reps wanting to quote below the minimum would need Administrator approval to do
so.
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XebraSource™ Quote Processing
Try the following exercise for jobs where the suppliers are subscribed to XebraSource™. Our
customer wants a Red Polo Shirt
Enter the Quote module – GO>QUOTING
1:
CREATE A QUOTE, click COMMANDS>NEW QUOTE. A screen appears to set
up a “quote ticket”.
a:
Select your customer (from the drop down list as you start typing). If the
customer does not exist, create a new one “on the fly” by creating a customer code in
accordance with your companies policy and then answer YES to “CREATE NEW?” and follow
the procedure you learnt in the tutorial to create BOTH the SHIPPING and BILLING details.
The Billing Customer and the contact that is linked to that Delivery address will automatically
appear. You may overwrite the contact if you are dealing with someone else on this occasion.
You can select a contact from the drop down box, or create a new contact.
b:
The status will default to QUOTE FOR CUSTOMER. (You can change this to
REQUEST FOR QUOTE if you need to obtain quotes from suppliers first but this is not
generally required if you are using XebraSource to locate the item. Please see the separate
manual Requesting Quotes from Suppliers for this procedure )
c:
You can allocate a Production Co-ordinator at this point, you can edit this
later when converting to an order if required.
d:
The QUOTE DATE will default to today’s date – you are able to change if
required
e:
You may enter a name to identify the Quote (Christmas Golf Day for
instance)
f:
If there is a deadline the job would be required by if you are successful, enter
that in the DUE DATE – you can use the date, the calendar or the “+” feature described in the
tutorial.
g:
Click OK
2:
SELECT A QUOTE METHOD… For this method we select IMPORT FROM
XEBRASOURCE and click OK. (You can quote items and their related line items from another
quote or job and play with quantities and margins for this customer if you wish. Manual Entry
is covered later.
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The first time you do this in the day, you will notice that Xebra will start to open up the
separate database, XebraSource™. Depending on your internet speed, this may take around
30 seconds – just wait for it to open. Once you have opened it, always leave it running in the
background and then this screen will not appear for the rest of your “Xebra session”.
3:
At the start of 2012, XebraSource™ had over 40000 items from around 100 Suppliers
catalogues complete with their products, images and buy prices.
When doing a product search, it helps to narrow it down. Click on Category and select
WEARABLES. Click on SUBCATEGORY, enter S to get the scrollbar down to the s’s and
then scroll down using the mouse till you come to SHIRTS – POLO. In Keywords, enter the
word RED to look for polos with a red option. We normally change the RESULTS to 50 to
save going through NEXT PAGE all the time. Then click SEARCH. You will get many
“results”.
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4:
Double click on the first result – in my example it is the Winning Spirit PS09.
You get more detail and you can click on PRICE TABLE to view your cost pricing. You have
the option of scrolling through the results using the NEXT RESULT and PREVIOUS RESULT
button. However, we will use the PS09. Click on CREATE LINE ITEM.
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5:
A screen appears – Select Xebra Item.
If you have used this product before, the Item number and description will appear in the
bottom half of the screen (as per the example above). If that is the case, the SELECT FOR
LINE ITEM button is active and you would just need to click on that.
However, if this is the first time we have used the PS09, nothing would appear in the lower
section of the screen and we would need to import the item from the Suppliers catalogue.
Click on CREATE NEW. A new window appears asking us to enter a new code. You have the
option of using the supplier code or making a generic code for yourself. In the example, we
have used the supplier code so we entered PS09 and click OK. The New Item window
appears (as per the tutorial) and the data is automatically completed.
There are 3 fields you should check before continuing as this will now become the
generic item in your own item file.
You should check the long Description (you may not want to describe the item using all the
suppliers description), add your Product category as per your company policy and then make
sure the Supplier name appears next to the SUGGESTED VENDOR 1 code – if not, use the
binoculars to find the supplier from your Vendor file. (If that supplier is not there, you are able
to add the new supplier on the fly by placing the cursor in the Vendor 1 code field and
pressing TAB.) Close this window and now your Select Xebra Item will be active and look like
the example above. Click OK.
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6:
The Cost Matrix window appears – your company’s pre-defined target margin will
automatically populate (MARGIN not MARK UP – refer to the Margin-Markup conversion
spreadsheet supplied).
Our default target margin has been set to 35% - you are able to change this but if you have a
minimum margin set against your Rep Code, you will not be able to quote a margin
lower than that. You may enter a REMARK - If we enter a REMARK it will appear on all
forms – both the customer (quotes etc) and the supplier forms (Purchase Orders etc). Up to
you but we prefer to use the LONG DESCRIPTION within the “D”etail later on. The system
has brought your selected item (the MLI) into your quote.
7:
The first thing we need to do is enter the quantities we are quoting on and the MLI
cost price(s). Enter your first quantity, click TAB and enter the relevant Item Unit price from
the cost prices displayed. We are going to quote on 75, 100 and 125 Polos. The price list
informs us to call for quantities 100 and over. Let’s assume we have been given a verbal price
of $9.35 for the 100 and 125 quantity.
In the first Quantity field, enter 75, click TAB and enter the 9.41 from the displayed price. In
the next Quantity field , enter 100, click TAB and enter the 9.35 verbally quoted price. In the
rd
3 Quantity field, enter 125, click TAB and enter the 9.35 verbally quoted price. You can enter
up to 5 quantity breaks. We will also quote on a quantity of 10, to demonstrate the minimum
charge per order functionality.
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8:
The next section of the screen, ADDITIONAL CHARGES, relates to the RLI (related
Line Items) - what are we going to do to the Polo shirt to make it into the end product and
what are all the costs related to these processes. In this exercise we are going to embroider a
logo on the left chest and this will involve SETUP, EMBroidery, and the accrual of internal
freight to get it from the supplier to the decorator and then to us to check before we send to
the customer.
Some costs vary as quantities vary, others remain static. The matrix caters for all
combinations and if you have pre-loaded your costs into the 8 level multi-level pricing in your
item file, these will load and store automatically.
FIRSTLY, ACTIVATE THE QUANTITY YOU ARE FIRST WORKING WITH by clicking the
SELECT to the right of that quantity (see the dot in select on the 10 quantity row above)
Click on the top ADD square. Now enter your product code for setup – ours is SETUP TOTAL
which is the preloaded setup cost for Total Embroidery. If you don’t know what yours is, enter
the first few letters and select from the drop down box or click the binoculars to the right. If
you don’t have one, you will get asked to create one and it will allow you to do this on the fly
(you will be stepped back into the NEW ITEM entry window).
Pressing TAB allows you to change the description. Tabbing again allows you to change the
Product category if you need to. TAB again takes you to the Supplier for this process. The
system will default to the Supplier of the RLI if you have the Vendor preloaded in the Item File
or the MLI Vendor if not (Main Line Item – the Polo – in this case SHINY). If you don’t have
the Supplier pre-loaded, change the supplier to your decorator – although Shiny offer
decoration in this window, for the exercise we are going to use TOTAL EMBROIDERY. You
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then get the option of ITEMISING the process separately in your quote, BUNDLING the cost
into your Quantity pricing, or as we will find in the next item, Bundling it as a UNIT cost. We
will use ITEMISE in this case. If your costs are preloaded, that cost will appear. TAB allows
you to edit/enter the cost price for this. Our preloaded cost of $60 was populated
automatically and you will see that the target margin has been applied displaying a price for
the quote of $92.31. You can overwrite the calculated price if you wish. The next column asks
if this cost is going to be the same on all of the quantities being quoted. With Setup, that will
be the same on all of our quantities so I have this ticked.
Now click the next ADD square, TAB and enter your code for Embroidery – my code is
EMBTOT5000 being the preloaded item for 5000 stitch embroidery for Total Embroidery and
the correct pricing for that quantity automatically populates. If you need to, change the
supplier to your decorator and if the costs are not preloaded, then enter your unit cost for
each embroidery for that quantity and tick UNIT. Embroidery costs can differ depending on
quantities so we don’t tick Use Same Cost. See how as there is a minimum order charge for
embroidery, for the 10 units, it has bundled a minimum charge of $60, but higher unit qtys are
calculated at the relevant qty break price.
Now we need to enter the internal freight accrual. Click the next ADD square, TAB and enter
your code for this type of freight – we use FRTACC. As this freight may be undertaken by
more than one supplier or freight company, remove the default Vendor. Enter the actual or
estimated cost for this quantity and select BUNDLE. Freight may well change depending on
the number of items so we do not tick Use Same Cost. Note the bundled total now shows in
the QUOTE QUANTITIES section above.
Now activate the second quantity (by clicking on Select at the right of the Quantity line),
change your variable costs in the additional charges for that quantity and repeat that process
until costs for all quantities have been entered. You will see in our example, we have taken up
$30 freight for the 100 quantity and $35 for the 125 plus our preloaded pricing has recognised
the embroidery quantity break above 100 and reduced to $2.35 for the 125 quantity.
You will note that all the correct costs now appear in the Quote Quantities lines above and
your target margin has been applied.
9:
Now we can manipulate our quoted prices. The cost matrix is displaying the sell price
at our target margin, the $profit and the actual margin. We can manipulate the customer price
in any of 3 ways… change the calculated sell price and the $profit and quantity margin will
recalculate. Change the $profit and the sell price and quantity margin will recalculate. Change
the Quantity margin and the sell price and the $profit will recalculate. Remember that you will
not be able to enter a price, profit or margin that is lower than your minimum which has been
set for you by the Company.
If you leave a line, you can re-enter the cost matrix at any time by double clicking on the
Quote Item or clicking on the back and forward aqua coloured arrows in the matrix window.
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10:
Tailor the item description to suit this particular customers quote by clicking on the D
button just under the image (refer quoting screen image on page 9). If you want to add any
attachments to this quote item, do so in this window
11:
Once you are happy with your descriptions and pricing, close the window and your
first quote item appears in your quote window. If you have more items to quote, stay in the
Quote Item & Entry window and click COMMANDS>NEW or click the icon on the left to create
a new quote item. Repeat the process as many times as you wish. For our example, we have
given an alternate polo plus a cap. Once you have all your quote items entered, close the cost
matrix window and you are ready to quote from the ACTIONS menu (see 2:Preparing the
quote later in this procedure guide)
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Non XebraSource Item – Manual Method
The following is the procedure to quote items you manually create or items that are stored in
your item file using exactly the same cost matrix window.
1:
BEFORE YOU START YOUR JOB, you may want to create your Non XebraSource
item in your item file (GO>QUOTING>VIEW>ITEM>COMMAND>NEW) – you can use
copy/paste if you want to use an item from a website and upload an image.
Enter the details of the Suppliers product – we used Cut and Paste from this Supplier’s
website to get the description and the Long Description and the SAVE PICTURE AS from
their website to save the image and then click on IMAGE in the Xebra ITEM window and ADD
to upload it and store the Image for the new item.
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Enter the Quote module – GO>QUOTING
1:
CREATE A QUOTE, click COMMANDS>NEW QUOTE. A screen appears to set
up a “quote ticket”., as per the Xebra Source Item option.
2:
SELECT A QUOTE METHOD… For this method we select MANUAL ENTRY and
click OK. (You can quote items and their related line items from another job or quote and play
with quantities and margins for this customer if you wish).
3:
The blank Cost Matrix window appears.
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Enter your newly created item code or select an existing item from your item file. If your item
does not have an image, save one from a known location and click on the black image box to
upload one. You can replace existing items from this window as well. So we select the F03K
we just created (refer page 13). The item is brought in with any details we previously entered.
If you want to you can just create an item on the fly with or without an image and click on the
D beneath the image field to add any long description you may want. If you had prices preloaded into your item file, the pricing would also display to you. Otherwise you can use a
paper catalogue or quoted price for your pricing. From here, you operate exactly the same
way as with a XebraSource quote, Enter your quantities and unit prices for the MLI, enter your
costs for all your RLI related to the pertinent quantities, tailor your descriptions, manipulate
your sell prices with any of the sell price, $profit or margin and you are ready to quote.
Remember that you will not be able to enter a price, profit or margin that is lower than your
minimum which has been set for you by the Company.
Once again, you can re-enter the matrix as often as you wish. As with the XebraSource
method, you can edit pricing as often as you want up until the quote is accepted. The
padlocks to the right of the select radio buttons will automatically lock after you have created
the first Quote Document, but you can just click on the padlock to lock & unlock as you wish.
You can have quotes using combined XebraSource and Manual items
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Close the cost matrix window and you are ready to quote from the ACTIONS menu (see
2:Preparing the quote –next section in this procedure guide)
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2:
Preparing the quote
Having created your quote, we now want to send it to the customer. From this point on,
Preparing the quote and recording the order happens from the ACTIONS window of your
QUOTING screen
With the job we are quoting visible, click ACTIONS>PREPARE CUSTOMER QUOTE
Click Prepare Customer Quote and the quote will preview. Click on the e-mail button and your
quote is on it’s way
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3:
Following up the quote
It is recommended that on at least a weekly basis, you should use the system to follow up
your quotes. Quotes can be left in QUOTE FOR CUSTOMER status, recorded as an ORDER
IN PROCESS or REJECTED if the customer does not go ahead.
It is essential you follow this process if you want meaningful quote success
reporting.
There are numbers of ways of doing this but the best method for a rep to follow up on a day to
day basis is to use the DETAILED JOB SEARCH function under the COMMANDS menu of
the Quoting screen.
In the search screen that appears, you have many options – this screen is great for locating
all sorts of items or sales or quotes or orders – basically anything within any job(s). For
following up on quotes, you select QUOTE FOR CUSTOMER in the STATUS (top right). You
then put your Rep Code (as stored in your Rep file in Xebra) in the Sales Rep field. Click
SEARCH. If you are after a particular quote and don’t know the quote number, enter the
quote name or the item into the search words. Results are listed in newest to oldest order.
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All your current quotes will be listed. The example above is displaying that rep JM has 2 live
quotes and on top we can see the quote we created in the exercises above. Double click on a
quote and it will bring up the related job.
There are 3 possible actions.
1:
The customer hasn’t made up their mind. In this case, make a note on the job by
clicking ADD (middle of the Order Entry Screen) and enter your note - the note is just that there are about 5 lines available. Click OK and the note will appear on the Order Entry
screen. By entering that note, when you do the follow up procedure the next time, you will be
reminded of what happened and if the date to call is not due, move on to the next quote follow
up. You can double click on the note to edit at any stage
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2:
If the customer is going to proceed, the quote is turned into a job and transferred to
Order Entry. Lets take our example of the quote for 2 different polos and a cap. The customer
wants to go ahead with 110 PS09 polos and 110 caps. Enter through
QUOTING>ACTIONS>RECORD CUSTOMER ORDER.
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You have the choice of creating a new job or adding to an existing job. So in this case we will
create a new job for the first item and add to that job for the second.
You can enter the Customer’s Purchase Order, revise the Job Due Date & edit the Production
Co-ordinator at this point as well.
Click Create new job – a job number is allocated. Double click on the first line item the
customer is proceeding with (PS09 in our example).
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The cost matrix reappears. Now our customer has decided to go with 110 of these polos. We
decide to provide those at the 100 rate. Click Select on the 100 quantity line and change the
quantity to 110. If you want to at this stage, you can click the D under the image and enter
any Vendor instructions or edit the customer long description to reflect the colours chosen etc.
If you change the quantity to process, you will have this pop up box appear. Because the
Price information has locked, it shows the Total unit cost has reduced for 110 items but still
selling at the original 100 price. Click Ok to acknowledge the change.
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Making sure you have entered the correct quantity & have the radio button selected, click
RECORD ORDER. Now we could go to that new job by clicking the LOAD JOB under the
quote number on the top left but we want to also add the caps to the job. Simply scroll to the
caps using the aqua arrows, change the 100 quantity line to 110 and Record Order. As soon
as you click RECORD ORDER, that quote line is locked (see how the Record Order button is
now greyed out). If you have made a mistake in the quantity or price, you will need to change
it in the job or delete that job, use the REPEAT QUOTE and do it correctly.
You will be prompted to Include notes when creating the job, click yet to have the notes
transferred to the Order Entry Screen, or no to not transfer the notes.
Now we have added the items going ahead, we can LOAD JOB. However, the items that are
left (the PS08, HE238 etc) remain available to add to another job at any time down the track.
Or you can use the aqua arrows to scroll through & add additional lines to the same job.
When you have added all items you wish to the order, then click on Load Job.
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We are now transferred to the Order Entry screen. Note the quantities in the job. The correct
decoration pricing has been picked up for the correct quantity. Note the freight accrual and
setup. The quantities show 110 but the unit of measure is LT (Lot). Lot pricing is a set price
shown in the unit cost/price – it does not get multiplied by the quantity so even though setup
may show as 110 at $60, the cost will only appear as $60 in your reports and POs.
Note also that the Quote Name has also followed through to become the JOB NAME – this is
editable. If we go back to the Quote window, we will see this has now been flagged as a
successful quote for reporting purposes.
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3:
The customer does not want to go ahead. The Detailed Search results window is still
present (often behind the screen you are currently working in but you can pull it to one side to
make it easier to toggle back and forth between screens. Click on that screen to make it
active. Double click on the next Quote (in this case our second example) and that Quote will
now appear in the Quoting window.
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Click the down arrow next to STATUS (at the top left) and select REJECTED. Next to the
status, there is a Comment field which will now become active. You can enter an internal
reason code or word so that when you print your quote reports, you can ascertain how many
were quotes lost for each reason
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Repeat the process of toggling back and forth between the search results and the order entry
till you have followed up on all quotes.
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