Completing Sales Transactions

The life of a successful sales transaction typically starts with a draft quote A formal offer for products or services, proposed at specific prices and related payment terms, which is sent to an opportunity, account, or contact.. When the quote is ready, it is activated and sent to the customer The account or contact with which a business unit conducts a business transaction.. A quote frequently undergoes several revisions between the salesperson and customer before it is accepted.

After the quote is accepted, an order A confirmed request for delivery of goods or services based on specified terms. An order is a quote that has been accepted by a customer. is generated from the quote. The order is used to fulfill the agreement of goods or services that were offered in the quote. Finally, after the order for the goods or services is shipped, an invoice An order that has been billed. An invoice is also a record of a sale to a customer, including details about the products or services purchased. is generated.

In Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, quotes, orders, and invoices are considered to be the same item, but in different states of transition.

Your sales force can use the tools and templates in Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online to create and print quotes, orders, and invoices when they are working either online or offline at a customer site. Additionally, these tools are used to set expiration dates and convert quotes into orders or orders into invoices.

Understanding Quote Stages

To some extent, the definitions of the stages of quotes will be set at your organization. However, when you create a new quote, it is automatically set to Draft, and the revision ID is set to 0.

In many organizations, a quote needs a manager's confirmation before being set to Active. Some organizations use workflow to route the quote to the manager to review it and turn it to Active. In other organizations, the person who creates the quote can set it to Active.

Only an active quote should be sent to a customer. Once a quote is made active, it becomes read-only so that the version you sent to the customer matches what you have in-house. If you need to revise a quote, you can revise it, and the revision ID will increase by one. This way, you can correlate your revision of the quote with what has been sent to the customer.

When you close a quote, you have three choices: Lost, Canceled, or Revised. If you choose to revise the quote, a new quote is created, set to Draft status, and you can start over. If you choose not to revise the quote, the quote is closed.

Differences between Current Pricing and Prices Locked

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online has two kinds of pricing behavior on orders and invoices: Use Current Pricing and Prices Locked.

The Use Current Pricing behavior is directly associated with the price per unit for a product that is in the product catalog. Therefore, if a price is changed for a product in the product catalog, the unit price will change in all open invoices as well as both draft and active orders that include that product. This may not be the behavior you want with existing orders or invoices that have already been presented to the customer.

Prices Locked locks the price per unit for a product in an open order or invoice. Even if a price change is made to a product that is in the product catalog, the open order or invoice that has Prices Locked enabled will remain at the original price.

Note that, when you enable Prices Locked, you disable Use Current Pricing.