In addition to placing orders on your website, your customers have the ability to request an estimate. Your Control Center gives you the tools you need to respond to the client. Here's how the process works.

How Customers Request Estimates Through Your Website

By default, every order form on your website that does not have pricing activated has a "Request an Estimate" button right next to the "Add to Cart" button. This allows new customers who may not yet be ready to commit to an order to still use the order form to give you the information you need to provide a good estimate. Meanwhile, your returning customers can use the same form to complete their order and bypass the estimate process if they wish. All order forms also have a link to an all-purpose estimate request form that allows your customers to send an estimate request even if they couldn't locate the "correct" order form for their project.

Once the customer clicks "Request an Estimate" they get a message that lets them know their request has been submitted and that you will be contacting them with a quote.

How You Send Estimates To Your Customers

When your customer submits a request for an estimate, the customer rep assigned to that user will receive an email notification telling them that an estimate has been requested. The email contains a link that will go directly to the estimate request in the Workflow.

You can also use the tools in the Workflow section to locate estimate requests, and use the sidebar tools to filter them by their status. Estimate requests are also identified in the list with a "$" icon. You can then click on the order number to view the estimate worksheet.

If you have an estimating program that produces a detailed PDF of an estimate, you are able to upload it here. Be sure to fill in the total price for the estimated quantities, and use all three boxes to offer more than one quantity option — the customer will be using those options to finalize their order later on.

When finished, click the "Send Estimate to Customer" button. The system will automatically deliver an email to the customer with a link to the estimate online, which they can click to view their estimate and download the estimate file (if you've attached one). They also will be able to approve the estimate, reject it, or ask you questions about it.

The Estimate Workflow

After the customer has requested an estimate and you have sent one, there are a few different directions the estimate can take:

• The customer can request more information: By clicking "Ask a question about this estimate", the customer is able to send a question to your printshop regarding the estimate. Their note will be attached to the job journal, and the assigned customer rep will receive an email notification advising them that a question has been added to the job journal. They can follow a link in the email to go directly to the job journal and respond to the customer.
• The customer can accept the estimate and submit it as an order: Clicking "Accept Estimate" places it into the customer's shopping cart as an order, and brings them to the shopping cart screen to submit their order. As with standard orders, your customer rep will receive an email notification to let them know an order has been submitted.
• The customer can reject the estimate: The client can decline the order by clicking the "No Thanks" button. At that point, the estimate is terminated (it will still be accessible in the Workflow as a reference, but the order-from-estimate functionality ceases at this point. But it's not all loss — the customer will be prompted to send you a message to explain why they've rejected the estimate. If it's something you are able to work with them on, you may be able to save the sale.
• You can manually update the status of the estimate: Ideally, your customer will use the website to accept the estimate, reject it, or ask for more information about it. But if they don't, you also have tools available to you to move it forward on the customer's behalf. Just go back to the estimate worksheet, and you'll now see an option at the bottom to select a quantity and send the job to production or to mark it as officially declined. Just like when the customer approves the estimate, this will move it into the shopping cart. The customer then needs to go to their shopping cart and submit the order.