Quote Requests

note

This video was recorded before "Productions" were renamed "Accounts". Where the video says production, the Dashboard now says account.

A Quote or Hold Request is a set list that a customer has sent you for pricing and/or availability. Customers build set lists on your Propcart Pro webstore or on the Propcart Marketplace, then press Request Quote to send one to you.

Find them in the Dashboard under Inbound → Quote Requests.

"Quote" is the default wording. You can change it to "Hold" (or another option) with the Request setting in your Inbound Requests Settings, and the Dashboard and your customer's emails will use that word instead.

What the customer submits

When the customer requests a quote, they give you:

• the pickup date and the return date
• their company and the name of their project
• pickup, or shipping to an address they give with an on-site contact and notes, if Offer Shipping? is on in your webstore settings
• optionally, their department coordinator's email, a PO number and notes

The emails

Two emails go out as soon as a quote request is submitted:

• To the customer: a confirmation that you received their request, listing the items. It has a spreadsheet attached for budgeting and a PDF they can forward to their team. You can edit this email in your Email Template Settings.
• To you: a "New quote request" email, sent to your sales email, with a View on Dashboard button that opens the request.

Reading a quote request

The top of the page shows the set list name, company, project, submission time, pickup and return dates, delivery details, and the buyer's contact information and notes.

The icon next to the title tells you whether anyone has dealt with it yet:

• A red bell means it is unresolved. It counts toward the number on the Notifications bell.
• A green check means it is resolved.

A quote request is resolved automatically when you convert it to an order. To resolve it without making an order, open the menu and choose Resolve. You can unresolve it the same way.

The page has three tabs:

• Items: the items and quantities the customer requested.
• Activity: who resolved, exported, emailed or converted the request, and when.
• Compare: how a revised request differs from the order you already made. See Revisions below.

Converting a quote request to an order

Press Convert to Order to turn the request into a new order in one step. The order gets:

• the request's pickup and return dates, title and PO
• every requested item, as line items at their current prices
• the buyer's email address, so they can see the order
• you as the sales rep
• the buyer, project, company, coordinator and buyer's notes, copied into the order's private notes
• for a request the customer wants shipped, its shipping and return shipping, by the methods you choose when you convert it, to the address they gave. See Delivery and Shipping.

It also takes your usual defaults for new orders: status, order type, contract, terms and tax region.

If you have marked any items Unavailable (see Availability below), you're asked whether to carry them over to the new order. Choose No to leave them off.

Once the order is created, the Dashboard takes you to it. Back on the quote request, the order number now appears in the header and the button becomes Go to Order.

Availability Badges on the Set List items

Customers may return to the set list they sent you, and converting it to an order changes what they see there.

Until you convert, each item shows whatever your inventory says: Available, Pending or Unavailable. The line items you just created are holding those items, so from now on the customer sees them marked Reserved, in blue, above a note naming your order number: "These 12 items are reserved for you on Order #2492."

Know this before a customer asks:

• 1 of 2 Reserved means you put fewer on the order than they asked for. The badge keeps the real availability color, because the rest isn't theirs yet.
• Nothing is stored against the order. The next time their set list checks availability, which it does on its own, the badge reflects your line items as they stand. Delete a line, cancel the order or take the items back and the item returns to showing its real availability.
• If one of those line items is double-booked with another order, the customer doesn't see Reserved for it at all. They see the real availability instead, because the items may yet go the other way. Sorting that out is yours to do, and the customer is told nothing about the other order.
• View order opens the order only for a customer who is a contact with access on the order's account. Everyone else gets a "Permission denied" page with a link to request access from you, so expect the odd request after you convert.

This needs Check Availability?, in the List Settings section of your Inbound Requests Settings. It's for Propcart Pro webstores, and like the other webstore settings it takes effect the next time you publish.

note

This is not the Availability selector further down this page. That one is a set of dropdowns you set by hand on the request's Items tab. Reserved is worked out from your line items, on the customer's set list, and there's nothing for you to set.

Add an account

A new order made from a quote request has no account, and the order shows an error until you add one. The customer may not have an account with you yet, or may not know what you've called theirs.

Choose an account in the order's Account field:

• If the account already exists, search for it and select it.
• If you don't have the customer's paperwork yet, use the placeholder account your team keeps for this and change it later.
• To create the account on the spot, type its name in the Account field and choose the option to create it.

Creating accounts from the order form is controlled by Can Accounts be created within an Order? in your Order Settings. Turn it off if you want new accounts to be set up only from the Accounts page.

Revisions

Customers often change a set list after they've sent it to you: they add items, drop some, or change quantities. When they request a quote again for the same set list, you get a new quote request, and the original stays as it was.

Each new request for the same set list is a revision. The first request has no revision number. The next one is Revision 1, then Revision 2, and so on. The revision number appears in the page title and on the Quote Requests list, so you can see every version the customer has sent.

Don't convert a revision to a new order

If you've already started an order from an earlier version, you usually don't want a second order. Update the existing order instead:

1. Open the revision. From the Quote Requests list, a revision opens straight to its Compare tab.
2. Add and remove items on the existing order from the Compare tab (below).
3. Open the menu and choose Resolve.

When you resolve a revision, if any older revisions of the same set list are still unresolved, the Dashboard offers to resolve them for you.

Comparing a revision to your order

The Compare tab puts the revision next to the order you made from an earlier version of the same set list. The top of the tab shows which order it is comparing to, with a link to that order and the order's sales rep. If you made more than one order from that set list, pick the one you want from the dropdown.

Each row shows three quantities for an item:

• Prev. Request: how many the customer asked for in the previous revision
• This Request: how many they're asking for now
• On Order: how many are on the order right now

The tab lists:

• items whose quantity changed since the previous revision and doesn't match the order yet
• items in this request that aren't on the order at all, including any you left off when you converted

Additions are listed first, then removals.

If nothing needs to change, the tab says "No differences found." You'll also see that message on a first request, because there is nothing earlier to compare it to.

Merging the changes into your order

Each row has a button that brings the order in line with the request:

• Add increases the line item's quantity or, if the item isn't on the order yet, adds it as a new line item.
• Remove reduces the line item's quantity. If that would take it to zero, you choose what happens:
  • Delete Line removes the line item from the order.
  • Cancel Line keeps the line item on the order in Canceled status.
  • Skip leaves the line item unchanged.

Each change goes on the order's Activity tab and the order's totals are recalculated. If a line item was already Canceled, you're asked before it is updated, and it stays Canceled.

The buttons are disabled on a locked order or line item.

tip

The Compare tab compares each revision only with the revision just before it. If the customer sent several revisions since you last updated the order, work through them in order, starting with the oldest, so that no change is missed.

The Compare tab only compares items and quantities. If a revision changes the pickup or return date, update the order's dates yourself.

Availability

These tools are for prop houses that track rentals somewhere other than Propcart but still want to tell customers what's available through the Dashboard. If you manage your rentals in Propcart, you'll usually convert the request to an order instead.

To use them, turn on Use Availability Selector? in your Inbound Requests Settings. Each item on the Items tab then gets a status dropdown:

Status	Color
Available	Green
2nd Hold	Orange
Unavailable	Red
Pending	Blue
Unknown	Gray

The menu also gets an Availability Actions submenu:

• Check Availability checks every item against your Propcart line items for the requested dates and quantities, and sets each status for you.
• Mark all Available sets every item to Available.
• Email Availability emails the customer the status of each item. The message is filled in for you and you can edit it before sending.

Every status change and availability email is recorded on the Activity tab.

Other options

The quote request menu also has:

• Export PDF (3x3) and Export PDF (5x5): a PDF of the items, three or five across
• Export Spreadsheet: a CSV of the items
• Request Account Application: emails the buyer a link to fill out an Account Application

Quote Request settings

These settings are in the Quote Request Settings section of your Inbound Requests Settings. The section's name follows your Request Word Choice, so it may say "Hold Request Settings" instead.

info

Request Word Choice, the three Self-Pick settings and Max Request Lead Time affect your Propcart Pro webstore, and they take effect the next time you publish it. They don't apply to requests sent from the Propcart Marketplace.

Request Word Choice

Choose what customers call their request: Quote, Hold, Asset or Print. Only the wording changes. The request works the same whichever word you choose.

If your webstore always shows prices, "Hold" usually fits better, because the customer already knows the price and is asking you to hold the items. If prices are hidden, use "Quote".

Hide Quote Request Pricing?

Your business might serve different industries (e.g. film, events, staging) where you price the same items differently. If so, your item prices might be the weekly rate for film customers, the monthly rate for staging customers, and the daily rate for events customers. In these cases, it might be better to hide pricing altogether. Turn this on if you don't want customers to see item prices or the weekly total on their quote requests. It hides them from:

• the confirmation email the customer receives, and its attached spreadsheet
• quote requests you email to the customer from the Dashboard
• quote requests the customer shares by email
• the spreadsheets and PDFs the customer downloads from a quote request
• the Quote Requests pages on your Propcart Pro webstore

Your team still sees prices on the Dashboard, in the "New quote request" email and in Export Spreadsheet.

The emails, spreadsheets and PDFs change right away, including for requests sent from the Propcart Marketplace. The webstore pages change the next time you publish your webstore. The Marketplace's own pages still show prices.

Self-Pick Items

Some prop houses ask customers to pull certain items themselves, such as smalls. Three settings work together to handle this:

• Self-Pick Items Tags: the item tags (for example Smalls) that customers must pick themselves.
• Exclude Self Pick Items from Quote Requests?: turn this on to put the tags to use. While it's on, any item with one of those tags gets a Self Pick badge when a customer adds it to a set list.
• Self Pick Items Message: shown to the customer when they send a set list that has Self Pick items. Use it to explain that your staff won't pull those items, or that you charge a fee to pull them. Write {count} where you want the number of Self Pick items to appear. Up to 500 characters.

When a customer sends a set list with Self Pick items, they see your message, a list of those items and a Download Self Pick Items button. If every item on the set list is Self Pick, they can't send it until they add at least one other item.

An item is marked Self Pick when it's added to a set list. Items added before you turned the setting on, or before the item was tagged, are not marked.

Max Request Lead Time

The furthest ahead of the pickup date, in business days, that customers can send a request. This stops customers from putting holds on popular items months in advance.

If a customer tries to send a request too early, they're told how many days to wait and the earliest date they can send it.

Set it to 0 to allow requests any time before pickup. The default is 0.

Resolve Quote Requests After How Many Days?

Unresolved requests older than this are resolved automatically, so old requests don't pile up on your Notifications bell. This runs every night, and each request it resolves shows "Propcart Bot" on its Activity tab. The default is 90 days.

Set it to 0 to turn this off, so requests stay unresolved until someone on your team resolves them.

Use Availability Selector?

Adds the item status dropdowns and the Availability Actions menu to each request. See Availability above.

Send "How to work with us" email?

Propcart Pro webstores only. When a customer sends a request, they also get an email asking them to open an account with you, with a button linking to your webstore's Forms & FAQs page.

You can change its subject, text and button in the How It Works tab of your Email Template Settings.