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Create a quote and convert it to an invoice

Open this in Talisk HQ

Quote a customer, then turn the quote into an invoice when they go ahead:

  1. Go to Invoicing › Quotes and click Create Quote. Describe the job in notes and TALISK_HQ drafts a formatted quote; it's valid for the number of days your book sets.
  2. To send it, open the quote and use Email invoice (quotes are emailed from the quote's own screen, not the list). The button keeps the invoice wording, but what goes out is titled Quote. Tick the option to include the portal link and your customer gets View & accept online: a quote never carries a pay link, because there is nothing to pay yet.
  3. Your customer opens that link, reads the quote, and either accepts it by typing their name or declines it with an optional note. The quote's status on Invoicing › Quotes changes to Accepted or Declined, so you can see at a glance which ones came back. A customer can only answer once, and an expired quote refuses politely and asks them for an updated one.
  4. When the customer accepts, click Convert on the quote, then Create invoice: TALISK_HQ creates a draft invoice from it, dated today, with a fresh invoice number, marks the quote converted and opens the new invoice. Nothing is sent, and nothing is recorded in your books until you send it.

Accepting creates the job. As soon as your customer says yes, TALISK_HQ opens a job for the work under Invoicing › Jobs, named after the first line of the quote, with its own job number, the customer attached, and the quoted price already filled in on the Quote vs actual card. You do not have to create it or retype the price. Nothing is posted to your books: a job is a costing record, so charging materials and hours to it is safe long before you invoice anything.

Two details worth knowing. The price recorded on the job is the quote before sales tax, because the GST or HST you collect is money owed to the CRA rather than yours, and the job's costs are measured the same way. And if the quote was already tagged to a job, TALISK_HQ uses that one instead of opening a second.

Nothing else is assumed: the job has no scheduled date and no site address, because agreeing a price says nothing about when you are attending or where the work is. Open the job and fill those in when you book it.

Ask for a deposit before you start

A trade rarely starts a big job on nothing. On the quote, tick Ask for a deposit before the work starts, choose a percentage of the total or an amount, and say how much.

What that does and does not do:

  • It prints on the quote as "Deposit requested", with the figure, and it shows on the customer's portal page before they press Accept. So the deposit is part of what they are agreeing to rather than something they hear about afterwards.
  • A percentage is worked out on the total including sales tax, because that is what the customer is actually being asked to pay.
  • It records nothing in your books. Asking is not receiving. When the money lands, record it on its bank line under Ledger › Banking › Transactions, where TALISK_HQ holds it as a customer deposit until you invoice the work.
  • The quote total does not change. The whole amount is still what the job costs; the deposit is the part of it you want early.

When you convert the quote, the invoice does not inherit the request. By then the deposit is usually already in hand, and the invoice's job is to apply it rather than ask for it again. You can tick the box on an invoice too, if you are billing for work that has not started yet.

Converting then produces the invoice. One click clones the quote and advances your invoice number, so convert it only once the customer has agreed. The invoice stays attached to the same job, so what you billed and what it cost you sit on one screen.

The price you quoted carries across unchanged. Sales tax is worked out again at the rate in force on the day you convert, so a quote raised before a rate change bills the new rate rather than the old one. If the quote has no province on it, its tax is carried across exactly as it stood.

Good to know: Your customer accepts or declines online, on the same client portal that shows their invoices, and can only answer once. Accepting records who typed their name and when, and creates the job the work will be costed against; it does NOT create an invoice or post anything to your books. Turning an accepted quote into an invoice is still your decision, on the Convert button. A quote is emailed from its own detail screen, not the Quotes list. Convert clones the quote immediately with a new invoice number: there's no acceptance step to check first. A quote can ASK for a deposit up front, which prints on the quote and shows in the customer's portal before they accept, but asking records nothing in your books: you record the deposit when the money arrives, on its bank line. The request does not carry across when you convert the quote, so the invoice for the work does not ask for the same money twice.

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