How To: Expiry dates on quotations in Teamleader Focus

 

Tired of losing track of quotations that still need to be signed? By adding an expiry date to your document Teamleader Focus will notify you whenever a quotation is at risk of expiring and help you send a reminder to your customer. Read all about expiry dates and reminders for your quotations here.

 

 

What

Setting an expiry date on a quotation is a common practice in business transactions, for example because prices can fluctuate due to market conditions. By setting an expiry date on a quotation, you ensure that the price remains valid for a specific period, avoid misunderstanding and provide stability and transparency to your customer.

 

An additional benefit is that when customers are aware that a quotation has an expiry date, they may be more motivated to compare prices and negotiate favourable terms. The sense of urgency created by the expiry date can drive customers to explore other options, ensuring that they are obtaining the best possible value for their purchase.

 

Fill out the expiry date

When creating a new quotation or adapting an existing one, you’ll see the field ‘Valid until’. This is the expiry date on a quotation:

 

 

Fill out a date here.
This can be a date in the past, today’s date or a date in the future.

 

Default expiry date
Know that you can also set a default expiry date that will be filled out automatically when creating a quotation. 

  1. Go to Settings > Deals and Quotations
  2. In 'Preferences', enable the slider next to 'Set the expiry date to X days'
  3. From now on, every quotation created in the account will have a default expiry date filled out x days from today's date.
    Note: The number you fill out must be a whole number, and it's not possible to fill out 0 or a negative value here.

 

Lock on CloudSign

After you’ve filled out a date, a slider Lock on CloudSign appears.

 

If you enable this slider, customers won’t be able to sign the quotation on CloudSign after the expiration date. The default value of this slider can be defined via Settings > Deals and Quotations > Preferences > Lock signing of expired quotations by default on CloudSign.

  • Keep in mind that this setting can only be changed by an admin user, and that this is an account setting (meaning it applies to the whole account).
  • The default value of the toggle will be off in your settings

 

What you see: banners and reminders

  • When you edit a locked quotation you’ll receive the following warning. So keep in mind that the changes you make can be seen by the customer but they won’t be able to sign the quotation:
    Either change the ‘Valid until’ date of your quotation or unlock it on CloudSign if you want your customer to still sign.

  •  7 days before a quotation is about to expire, a warning banner will show on your quotation detail page and on your deal detail page:
    • The banner is dismissible: you can either click on the cross to remove it, or update the ‘Valid until’ field of your quotation to a later date

 

Send your customer a reminder

The banner above contains a clickable link to send your customer a reminder via email. The following dialog will open:

 

Click on Send to send the email to your customer.

 

Send yourself a reminder

Not only your customer can be reminded of expiring quotations, but also the assignee of a quotation. You can let Teamleader Focus send you automatic email reminders about expiring quotations:

  1. Go to Settings > Deals and Quotations > Preferences
  2. Enable the slider Notify me when a quotation is about to expire
    Note: this is a user setting, meaning that if you want to enable this for a certain user, they need access to ‘Settings’ in the account and activate the slider. Read more about user permissions here.
  3. When this preference is enabled, the user receives an automatic email 5 days before a quotation is about to expire
    • You’ll receive the email on the primary email address linked to your account
    • The user that receives the email is the assignee on the quotation. If there’s no assignee then the email is sent to the email address of the company entity to which the quotation belongs.

 

5 days before a quotation is about to expire, you’ll also receive a notification via the bell icon in your account.

When the quotation has eventually expired, you’ll also receive an in-app notification.

 

What your customer sees on CloudSign

First of all, 7 days before a quotation is about to expire, a notification banner is shown on CloudSign to warn your customer about the upcoming expiration.

 

When a quotation is expired and locked, the following things happen on CloudSign:

  • The ‘Sign quotation’ button will be greyed out/disabled making it impossible for your customer to sign the quotation.
  • The 'Refuse' button will be greyed out/disabled making it impossible for your customer to refuse the quotation.
  • A banner appears informing your customer that the quotation has expired with a possibility to ‘Request a new quotation’:

 

Quotation overview

  • You can add the column ‘Valid until’ to your quotation overview, in order to keep track of the expiry dates of your quotations. Click on it to sort on it:
  • You can also add the column ‘Quotation status’ to your overview to sort on the label ‘Expired’. However, a quotation will only receive the label ‘Expired’ if it hasn't been accepted yet. Accepted quotations, even though expired, will not lose their status to ‘Expired’ and remain ‘Accepted’.

 

Activity log

  • In the ‘Activities’ of both your quotation and the linked deal, the status ‘Expired’ will be logged when a quotation is expired:

 

  • When a quotation was locked on CloudSign but your customer requested extension on the quotation, the activities in the quotation detail page and the linked deal detail page will be updated with the date and time of the customer’s feedback, as well as the content of the feedback.

 

Expiry date on quotation template and email content

Communicate about the expiry date on your quotation in three places:

  • On the document template of your quotation
  • In the ‘template for quotation layout’ (introduction text of your quotation)
  • In the email template of your quotation

 

Quotation template

You can of course also place the specific expiry date of a quotation on your document itself. To do this:

  1. Go to Settings > Document layout > Quotations > View shortcodes.
  2. You’ll find the shortcode VALID_UNTIL_DATE.
  3. Download your current template in Word and add the shortcode between dollar signs anywhere you want on your document: $VALID_UNTIL_DATE$
  4. Check the preview of your quotation:

 

Template for quotation layout

Add the variable #VALID_UNTIL_DATE to the template of your quotation introduction text to include the date.

 

Email template for quotation

Or add the same variable #VALID_UNTIL_DATE to the email template for sending a quotation, to communicate more efficiently about the expiry date to your customers. 

 

Notes

  • It’s not possible to configure when to receive an in-app notification about the quotation expiry, the 5 days before is fixed
  • For the automatic email reminder, it’s not possible to configure when you want to receive it, the 5 days before is fixed
  • The email content of the notification or the automatic email reminder isn’t customizable
  • If you’ve uploaded default general conditions or general conditions for quotations, make sure to check that you haven’t mentioned a specific expiration period in there. This will confuse your customers if you’ve also included the shortcode for the expiry date on your quotation.

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