Once you create an opportunity on Cloud and add products and labor to a quote in the opportunity, you are ready to create a proposal for the project.

A Proposal is a document that includes all potential project information, such as equipment, labor, terms and conditions, and payment milestones, that you share with the customer and have them accept.

The "Proposals" functionality on Cloud is comprehensive and lets you easily move an opportunity from a "Lead' to "Won" and win the project.

If you want to view a video tutorial of the content in this article, click here.

Here are some key features for managing proposals.

You create a proposal from a quote. Once you have added everything the customer expects to the quote, you can create the proposal with a click.

Learn more about creating the proposal.

The Proposal view is different from the Quote view. The Proposal view lets you add a cover page, company details, case studies, professional licenses, a media gallery, and more. Each is a different section in the proposal, and you can edit and reorder them as needed.

Learn more about proposal sections.

When you create a proposal, you will be prompted to choose a layout: Multimedia or Quick Quote.

Proposals, when created, may use a built-in Cloud proposal template. You can add custom templates with sections that suit your organization's business requirements and apply them to proposals.

Learn more about proposal templates.

Beyond changing the layout and template, you may want to customize the proposal to best fit the project and customer.

Cloud offers many proposal-customization options unique to each section of the proposal. Some examples of customizations include:

You can remove sections that came from the proposal template and add new ones.

Learn more about editing the proposal.

Learn more about customizing the proposal sections.

If you want proposals to be reviewed and approved before they are shared or presented to customers, you can enable the "Proposal Review" functionality. With this functionality, you can share or present only proposals marked as "Reviewed" to customers.

Learn more about the Proposal Review functionality.

Cloud provides three options for sharing Proposals with customers.

You can present the proposal from your computer during an in-person meeting or an online meeting. This way, you can walk the customer through the proposal, note changes, and revise it.

If the customer likes the proposal, you can let them sign and approve it during the meeting.

Learn more about presenting the proposal.

If you cannot or don't need to walk the customer through the proposal, you can always email it from cloud@d-tools.com with a subject and a custom message.

The customer can open the proposal from the inbox, review it, and approve it.

Learn more about emailing the proposal.

You can share the proposal URL via email, chat, text, or other means. If you want to send the proposal to multiple recipients, each recipient gets a unique URL.

The customer can open, review, and approve the proposal.

Learn more about sharing the proposal URL.

When you share a proposal via email or URL, you can set an expiration date for review and add up to two reminders. You can also specify whether the recipients can download the proposal PDF offline.

Learn more about configuring Proposal-Sharing settings.

"Proposal Acceptance" is the Cloud workflow used to accept a proposal when you share or present it to customers. You can also collect a down payment amount using this workflow.

Once a proposal is accepted, Cloud marks the relevant quote as "Accepted." You can mark the opportunity as "Won" and start working on executing the project.

Learn more about Proposal Acceptance

After you share a proposal by email or URL, Cloud collects analytics data to show you who opened it and how many times.

You can see who is a hot vs. a cold lead. If someone hasn't viewed it, send the lead a reminder to take a look. You can also see who has signed and approved the proposal.

Learn more about Proposal Analytics.