Estimates & Quotes

Create professional estimates and convert accepted quotes to invoices.

Creating an Estimate

Go to Estimates in the sidebar
Click Create Estimate
Select the Customer
Set Estimate Date and Expiry Date
Add line items (see below)
Review totals
Click Save (draft) or Save & Send

Line Items

Each line on an estimate captures one thing you're quoting:

Description: What you're quoting for
Quantity: Number of units
Rate: Price per unit
Amount: Auto-calculated (Qty x Rate)
Tax %: Optional per-line tax rate

Products, Groups & Discounts

Every estimate line now starts with a product/service picker — the same one used on invoices. Choose a saved item from the dropdown and BizBooks Pro fills in the description, price, and tax automatically, so you stop retyping the things you quote every week. Leave it on Custom Item to type a one-off line by hand.

The picker also understands the special item types you set up under Products & Services:

Group items expand into a header line plus one editable line per component. Set the group up once, drop it onto the estimate, and rename the header to whatever that block represents. The header quantity acts as a multiplier across every component.
Subtotal dividers insert a running subtotal of every line above them — handy for breaking a large quote into sections.
Percentage discounts and surcharges calculate against the running subtotal, so a "10% off" line always reflects the true dollar figure even after you edit the lines above it.

Repeating blocks (e.g. rooms, phases, packages): If the same set of lines repeats throughout one estimate — like a painter quoting "Master Bedroom," "Living Room," and "Kitchen" with the same prep/prime/paint steps — build a Group once, add it once per section, and rename each header. Adjust the per-component quantities for each instance.

Income accounts carry over: When you convert the estimate to an invoice, each product-backed line brings its own income account along automatically, so the resulting invoice posts to the correct accounts with no extra clicks. Custom lines fall back to your default income account.

Sending Estimates

Email estimates directly to customers:

Open the estimate
Click Send Estimate
Review the email preview
Click Send

The estimate will be emailed as a PDF attachment.

Online Signing & Acceptance

Skip the print-sign-scan loop. BizBooks Pro can email your customer a private link that lets them review the estimate and sign off on it from any browser. The signature is captured electronically together with the signer's IP address, browser fingerprint, timestamp, and a SHA-256 hash that locks the record against tampering. This satisfies the legal threshold under the federal E-SIGN Act and the state-level UETA for binding electronic agreements on commercial estimates.

How to Send a Signing Link

Open any estimate from the Estimates view
Click the Send for Acceptance button
Confirm the recipient's email address (defaults to the customer's saved email)
BizBooks Pro emails the customer a tokenized link with a 30-day expiry window

What Your Customer Experiences

The link opens a mobile-friendly page showing your branded estimate -- company info, line items, totals -- exactly as it would appear on a printed quote. Two action buttons sit at the bottom: Accept & Sign or Decline.

Selecting Accept opens a short form where they enter their name, optional title (such as Owner or General Manager), and email, then pick a signing style:

Typed -- the page renders their name in flowing cursive
Drawn -- they sign with a finger on mobile or a mouse on desktop
Checkbox-only -- a single agreement checkbox for the fastest path

After they submit, a confirmation banner shows the audit hash, and the estimate status updates to Accepted on your end within seconds.

Reviewing the Signed Estimate

Every accepted estimate displays a green Accepted & Signed panel in the detail view, showing the actual signature image, the signer's identity, IP address, exact timestamp, and the audit hash. This panel is the legal record of the agreement and can be reviewed at any time.

Good to know: A signed estimate is locked as a record but you can still duplicate it to spin off a revised version for the same customer. The duplicate is a fresh draft -- working on it never alters or invalidates the original signed estimate.

Capturing Declines

If the customer chooses to decline, they are prompted for an optional reason. Knowing whether you lost the deal on price, timing, scope, or to a competitor is genuinely useful sales data -- the reason is stored on the estimate and surfaces in the detail view.

Audit Trail Detail

BizBooks Pro maintains a dedicated audit log for the acceptance workflow. Every view of the link, every accept, and every decline is logged with timestamp, IP, and browser. The cryptographic hash is recomputed from the estimate's amount, signer details, IP, and timestamp; if the underlying estimate body is altered after acceptance the hash no longer matches, providing built-in tamper detection.

Your Signed Copy

An acceptance you can only look at on a screen is not much use the day somebody disputes what was agreed. Every accepted estimate therefore carries its signature on the PDF itself, and a copy is emailed to you automatically.

What lands in your inbox

The moment the signature reaches your computer, BizBooks Pro emails you the countersigned PDF. It goes to the reply-to address on your company record, or your company email if you have not set one. The message summarises who signed, when, and for how much; the PDF is attached.

What is on the document

The signature image exactly as the customer drew or typed it
Their name, title and email address
The date and time they signed
The IP address they signed from
The SHA-256 audit hash
The full acceptance terms they agreed to, captured at the moment of signing

You can also produce it at any time from the estimate itself -- open an accepted estimate and use the PDF button as normal. The signature block is on it. Declined estimates print the decline date and the customer's reason in the same place.

Why this matters: the signature is the one part of the record that cannot be reconstructed from your data. Everything else -- amounts, line items, dates -- can be rebuilt. That is why it is pushed to your email as well as stored in your books, so a copy exists somewhere you control.

Retrieving signatures

Signatures are collected when your books check for them: automatically while the app is open, when you visit the Estimates screen, and on demand via Check for Signature in the estimate detail view. If a customer signs while your computer is off, the signature is waiting the next time you open the app.

Estimate Status

Status	Description
Draft	Not yet sent to customer
Sent	Emailed to customer, awaiting response
Accepted	Customer approved the estimate
Declined	Customer rejected the estimate
Expired	Past expiry date without response
Converted	Converted to an invoice

Converting to Invoice

When a customer accepts your estimate, convert it to an invoice with one click:

Open the accepted estimate
Click Convert to Invoice
Review the invoice details (all line items transfer automatically)
Adjust dates or terms if needed
Save the invoice

Note: The original estimate is linked to the new invoice for reference. You can view the source estimate from the invoice detail page.

Payment Schedule (Draws / Milestones)

For projects billed in phases, you can attach a payment schedule to any estimate. This is ideal for contractors, builders, consultants, and any work delivered in stages.

Adding a Payment Schedule

When creating or editing an estimate, check Payment Schedule (Draws / Milestones) at the bottom of the form
Click + Add Draw to add payment milestones
For each draw, enter:
- Description: Name of the milestone (e.g., "Foundation Complete")
- Amount: Payment amount for this draw
- Due Date: When payment is expected (optional)
- Condition: A milestone trigger instead of a date (e.g., "Upon completion")
Use Split Evenly to divide the total equally across all draws
Use Auto-fill Remaining to assign the balance to the last draw

Note: The total of all draws must equal the estimate total. The balance indicator shows whether your schedule is balanced before saving.

Converting to Invoice

When you convert an estimate with a payment schedule to an invoice, the entire schedule carries over automatically. Each draw's status, amount, and due date are preserved on the invoice.

Editing & Deleting Estimates

Draft estimates: Can be freely edited or deleted
Sent estimates: Can be edited (sends update notification to customer)
Converted estimates: Cannot be deleted (void the linked invoice instead)

Estimate Reports

Track your quoting performance:

Pending Estimates: All estimates awaiting customer response
Total Value: Sum of all pending estimate amounts
Acceptance Rate: Percentage of estimates that convert to invoices
Estimates by Customer: Filter to see quotes for specific customers