What Quotations Do
A quotation is a price offer. You put a set of items in front of a named customer, at prices you choose, and tell them how long those prices hold. The customer decides. Nothing happens to your stock, your books or your money until they say yes and you turn the offer into an order.
That is the whole point of the screen: it is the step before a sale. Until now that conversation lived in a spreadsheet or a chat thread, so nothing in your system knew what you had offered, at what price, or whether the deal was still alive.
Three things a quotation never does
It never reserves stock. The items on a quote stay fully available to sell to somebody else. If holding stock matters to you, that belongs to the order, not the offer.
It never charges anything. No payment, no invoice, no receipt.
It never touches your accounts. Nothing appears in your Profit & Loss, your Balance Sheet or your ledger because of a quotation. An offer is intent, not an accounting event.
The six states an offer can be in
| State | What it means |
|---|---|
| Draft | Still being built. Only your team can see it. |
| Sent | You have given the customer the PDF and are waiting. |
| Accepted | The customer agreed to these prices. |
| Converted | It became an order. Closed. |
| Expired | The validity date passed while it was still out. |
| Lost | The customer said no, or went elsewhere. |
Expired is worked out automatically from the validity date — nothing has to run overnight for it to be right, and a quote is never shown as open when its prices have already lapsed.
Who can see and do what
| You can… | You need |
|---|---|
| See the Quotations list, open a quote, download its PDF | View quotations |
| Create, edit, delete a draft, mark sent, mark lost | Manage quotations |
| Mark accepted and convert to an order | Convert quotations |
Converting is deliberately separate: making an offer commits nothing, but turning one into an order starts the chain that becomes revenue. If you do not have that permission the Convert button is not shown at all — you will not find a greyed-out button teasing you.
If you cannot see Sales → Quotations in the sidebar at all, you do not have the View permission. Ask whoever manages roles in your business.
Next: Creating a Quotation.