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Building a proposal
Adding services, writing the letter, and previewing what the client will get.
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Start from New proposal on the Proposals screen. There are four steps, shown across the top: Client & template, Services & fees, Wording, and Review & send. Your draft is saved as you go, and nothing reaches your client until you send it from the last step.
Step 1: client and template
Three questions, and they are meant to be quick.
- Choose a client. Pick from your contact book, or add one here if they are not in it yet: a new client needs an email address, which is where the proposal is sent.
- Choose a template. The template brings the wording, the currency, the VAT terms and the payment terms with it. Start blank is the last card, and means you write every block yourself.
- Name and expiry. The proposal name is your own label, used in your list and nowhere the client can see. Valid until is the date the offer stands to, and can be left blank.
The summary panel on the right shows what the chosen template brings with it, so you can see how much writing is left before you commit. Continue to services → creates the draft.
Step 2: services and fees
Tick what this client is buying lists your catalogue, grouped into its sections. Ticking a service copies its wording and its price onto this proposal, and opens its fee fields directly underneath, so you can change the figure for this client without touching the catalogue.
Each line has a Method (Fixed, Hourly or Estimate), its amounts, and a Billing cadence. Pricing, cadences and VAT explains what each one does to the fee table.
Additional services underneath is for anything the catalogue does not cover. Type a name and press Add bespoke service, then price it the same way.
Watch the panel on the right as you tick. Charges by billing cycle shows the net, VAT and total for each cycle separately, and it moves as you work. There is no single combined figure, because a one-off fee and a monthly fee are charged at different times and adding them together gives a number your client never pays.
The same panel names any line you have not priced yet, and Show affected services clears the filters and scrolls the first one into view. It is worth clearing, because an unpriced line prints as a blank on the letter and looks exactly like a priced one.
Step 3: wording
Three blocks, in the order they print: the cover letter, the engagement letter itself, and terms and conditions. Most of this arrives already written from the template, so the step is skippable for a standard piece of work.
If the template did not bring a cover letter or terms, you can add an empty one to this proposal only. It starts blank, because there is nothing to fall back on. If you want it on every future proposal, edit the template instead.
Merge fields such as the client name and your company details are filled in when the proposal is built. A badge on each block says whether it came From template or was Added to this proposal.
Step 4: review and send
Four panels: who it goes to, what you are sending, the terms, and the send panel itself. The fee table here is read-only on purpose, with a link back to step 2 if a figure is wrong.
The terms panel is also where the engagement's own clock is set, separately from the offer's: when the engagement starts, and whether it runs for a fixed number of months or continues until either side ends it. A fixed term is what your renewal reminders are driven from.
Preview proposal opens the whole letter exactly as your client will read it. It changes nothing, sends nothing and can be opened on an unfinished draft. See Sending a proposal for what happens after that.