Running your business on SnapLedger · Furniture & Fit-out · Lesson 5 of 10

Quote, approval, and the first invoice

3:07 · Captions: English, Arabic, French and Chinese.

Ask a growing business which jobs make money, and the honest answer is often: we'll know at the end of the year. It starts with a quote typed from memory, and an invoice typed again later. In this lesson, the price comes from Dunewood's own library — and the customer's yes becomes the invoice.

What you'll learn

  • Price the job from your own library
  • Turn the customer's yes into the advance invoice — in your sales company's name
  • Let the same job raise the invoice between your companies

Step by step

  1. The quotation — Zuhair builds a bill of quantities, room by room, and picks each piece from Dunewood's own library. Every line carries the piece and its standard price. Two sofas for the lounge, four shelving units for the open office — and the totals add up as he goes. The whole office: four lines, one total. One press creates the quotation.
  2. Send it — One press e-mails it to Ms Karam: a PDF in Dunewood Living's name, with Dunewood's usual payment stages — half when the customer approves, half on delivery.
  3. Customer approved — Ms Karam goes through the design with Sanjay and the price with Zuhair, and approves both. Zuhair marks the quotation Customer Approved — and SnapLedger offers to invoice straight away.
  4. The advance invoice — The invoice starts from the quotation, with all of its lines. Zuhair bills the first stage only: one line — the advance, half of the quotation — in English, and he issues it. It goes out in Dunewood Living's name, with the showroom's tax number and the bank account Qamar Bay pays into.
  5. Both invoices — And here's what used to wait for month-end. Issuing the customer's invoice has already lined up the second one: the workshop's invoice to the showroom, for the workshop's share of the job. On the Money tab, Zuhair confirms the workshop's share and drafts the invoice; its line names the job by its number. He opens it in the editor, sets it in English, and issues it. He issues it: from Dunewood Workshop to Dunewood Living, for this job. Two invoices, from one job, at the same moment.
  6. In the showroom's books — Look inside Dunewood Living's own books: both are already there — the sale to Qamar Bay, and the workshop's invoice, as a bill. Nobody typed them in, and the two companies' books agree.

Next: before anyone goes shopping, the job checks the shelf — and buys what's missing in one order per supplier.