Proposals are the financial counterpart to your project plan. Add a proposal to a folder first to create a project and invoice, or add a proposal to existing projects to track changes in scope. Use a single proposal and invoice based on individual line item(s) or reference multiple proposals to invoice change orders. Your PM sees an accurate record of customer/stakeholder requests and changes.
Add a proposal for a future project
- If the proposal comes prior to creating a project, add the proposal to a folder
- Complete the information in the form
- The information presented may vary based on your organizations use of optional custom data fields
- If the proposal is assigned to another user, that user is notified
- Save the new proposal
- When ready to proceed with the work, navigate to the Proposal's detail page and select the "[Create Project]" link
- This will launch the Project Add/Edit form to build a project like any other (including using a template)
- Launching a project this way links the Proposal to this Project for reporting and comparing planned vs actuals
Add a proposal to an existing project
Proposals on existing projects are used to propose changes and record the acceptance of those changes
- View existing project proposals
- Use the Views option for Invoice Records & Approvals
- Click the Add button under Proposals
- Complete the proposal form
- If the proposal is assigned to another user, that user is notified
- The proposal form will auto-populate data from the project
- Save the new proposal
Comparing Proposal $$$ vs Actual $$$ vs Invoiced $$$
- Use the Views option for Invoice Records & Approvals
- Check out the graph that displays Proposed Totals, Billable Totals, and Invoiced Totals
- Proposed Totals come from the proposals' totals
- Billable Totals come from the billable hours entered (multiplied by their rates)
- Invoiced Totals come from the Invoice Records' totals
- Create invoices from this screen
- Use the "[Create New Invoice]" from the Proposal table to invoice based on the line items from the proposal
- Use the Invoice Records table and Add button to invoice based on Time Entries or Expenses
View "Proposals I'm Assigned To" on Proposal Reports
- Navigate to the PI reports section
- Run a Proposal report
- Quick Tip: Under display the "Proposal Report Types" has the option to filter for "Proposals I'm Assigned To"
- View your results!
View Last Comment on Proposal Report
- Navigate to the PI reports section
- Run a Proposal report
- Display the Last Comment column in "Table Column Selection Options"
- View your results!
Connecting Proposal Expenses to Corresponding Tasks
- Add an expense deliverable to the proposal
- Make sure this expense deliverable has an "expense code" that can be defined in your "Time and Expense Settings" under Administration
- Add the expense deliverable to the project
- On the proposal form under "Description" click the option "Add to Project"
- After adding the expense deliverable to the project you will see it as a task on the project view
- When adding a work expenses on the project task it will default to that expense code
Add a Line Item from Project
- Assign a project to the proposal
- When in the edit view of the proposal, choose a project to assign it to in the field "Project Affiliation"
- The box "Add from Project" will appear under the Description section of the proposal
- Add deliverable from project
- By clicking "Add from Project" you can choose any task from the affiliated project to add as a line item
Please see the Adding Line Items to your Proposal article for more information
Open/Close State
A proposal can be changed to a Closed or an Open state. When marked as Closed, you cannot make any edits or delete the Proposal.
Comments
1 comment
Proposals are often the same as customer orders. The difference is that sometimes a proposal never gets approved by the customer as an order or change order, in which case it is maintained only as a historical record of customer communication.
Proposals are for setting fixed prices before beginning project work, and also for added work which is billable for agreed upon change orders. The proposal does not change with project work changes because proposals are the record of our billing agreements with our customer.
For time and materials billing, proposals are unnecessary overhead. The Invoice features have many detailed options for billing time and materials and more complex billing requirements than simply using fixed price from a proposal.
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