An offer is more than a simple list of prices and products—it serves as the foundation for clear and binding communication with your customers. With a written offer, you can establish not only products and conditions but also communicate essential legal and logistical details such as delivery times, payment terms, or general terms and conditions (GTCs). It allows you to provide your customers with the precise information they need to make informed purchasing decisions.
Note
What Is an Offer?
A written offer is the most legally secure way to define goods, terms, and delivery details. Offers can be made online, in writing, or verbally, and become legally binding when the necessary conditions are met.
-
Description of Goods/Services: Include type, scope, and specifications.
-
Offered Quantity and Price: Specify prices and applicable discounts.
-
Delivery Details: Outline delivery times, packaging, and freight costs.
-
Payment Terms: Define due dates, payment methods, and deadlines.
-
Legal Conditions: Include ownership retention, GTCs, place of fulfillment, and legal jurisdiction.
Tip
Differences Between B2B and B2C Offers:
In B2B transactions, written offers are the standard. They are often used for high-value goods or custom-produced products. Critical components include precise details about purchase prices, production costs, delivery conditions, delivery times, and legal frameworks. These factors ensure planning security throughout the supply chain.
In B2C transactions, the focus shifts toward visually appealing offer presentations, especially in online channels. Key considerations include providing essential information at a glance, simplicity, and a quick and seamless payment process.
You can release an offer, cancel it, mark it as confirmed, or convert it into the next document type. The action menu is available directly within the document or through the preview in the document overview.
General Actions:
These functions are available regardless of the offer's status:
|
Action |
Description |
|---|---|
|
Cancel Offer |
Sets the status of the offer to 'Cancelled'. |
|
Copy Offer |
Creates a new offer in draft mode with the same master data and positions. |
|
Open PDF |
Displays the offer as a PDF document. |
|
Export as CSV |
Exports the offer positions as a CSV file. |
Status-Based Actions:
These actions modify the status of your offer:
|
Action |
Description |
|---|---|
|
Approve Offer |
Changes the status of the draft offer to 'Approved'. |
|
Send Offer |
Sends the offer via email, prints it, or marks it as completed. The status changes to 'Sent'. |
|
Reject Offer |
Marks the offer as 'Rejected'. |
|
Mark as Accepted |
Changes the status of the offer to 'Accepted'. |
Follow-Up Actions:
The action menu allows you to convert your offer into other document types:
|
Action |
Description |
|---|---|
|
Convert to Order |
Creates a new order in draft mode based on the offer. |
|
Convert to Proforma Invoice |
Creates a proforma invoice in draft mode. |
Version Management:
You can create new versions of offers:
|
Action |
Description |
|---|---|
|
Create New Version |
Generates a new offer with the same data and an updated number (e.g., -1). It is automatically linked to the original offer. |
In the offer, bills of material are not displayed in an expanded form. You can display or edit the product information in the item text. If you want to have exploded bills of material displayed, you can add the bill of material to your offer using the Add bill of material button.
Note
Add bill of materials is a module in the Appstore and included in the Offer module in the xentral plan. If necessary, check your plan.
Steps:
-
Click on Add Bill of Materials in the position table.
-
Select a parts list from your product range using the arrow icon.
-
Select the quantity in which the bill of materials is to be inserted into the offer.
Quantity → Item quantity, how often the bill of materials should be inserted into the document.
Calculate price from parts → Calculates the sales price of the bill of materials from the sales prices of the individual parts of the bill of materials. Hides the maintained price of the main item.
Selection of BOM Items → The selection determines which items will appear on the document. The calculated price is only set based on the selected items. With the selection of sub-items you can control how your offer should look like, which information you want to print and which prices you want to enter manually.
-
Click OK to insert the bill of materials at the bottom of the position table.
Tip
These functions allow you to individually customize your offer for B2B customers.
Note
It is not possible to change the item quantities in a bill of materials. You can adjust the quantity individually in the position table.
You can calculate the price of a bill of materials (BOM) in two ways. Either you use the sales price of the BOM main item (header of the BOM). Alternatively, you can also have the price calculated from the components of the BOM, for example if you want to list production prices that are calculated into the final price in a BOM.
Steps:
-
Click edit in the position table of a BOM main item.
-
Set the Calculate Price from Parts setting.
-
Click Save.
Single items can be added to BOMs in the offer positions by sorting them under a BOM header item.
Steps:
-
Add a single item to the line position table in the offer.
-
Click on Edit this item in the position table.
-
In the Belongs to field, enter the item number of the BOM to which you want to assign the item. Select the item by clicking on it. The number in front of the item number gives you the item number so that you can see which item in the offer it is.
-
Click on Save to assign the item to the BOM.
You can have an offer automatically resubmitted with the document release. The resubmission reminds you and your team to follow up on an offer after e.g. 14 days.
Note
The prerequisite for automatic resubmission is the activation of the automatic function in the system settings and your offer must be valid until at least tomorrow (the valid until date must be greater than today). Expired offers do not receive automatic resubmission.
Steps System settings:
-
Set how many days your offers are valid (Offer days valid until).
-
Specify after how many days the reminder of the resubmission should be displayed (Offer days resubmission).
-
The resubmission will be saved when the offer is released and you will be reminded automatically after the days have expired. If you want to have someone from your team remind you as a substitute, you can enter the person in the field Report to employee and save.
Note
Of course, you can also manually set or change the validity date of an offer and the reminder date of the resubmission. It is not necessary to edit the resubmission, but you can of course use the fields to add further important information.
If an offer is continued as an order, cancelled, marked as rejected or marked as commissioned, the resubmission is automatically closed.
You can format an offer in the position table by grouping positions, inserting headings and calculating subtotals.
You can sum up items in different ways:
-
Subtotal: Total of all items listed above the Subtotal item. Optional items are not included in the subtotal.
-
Group total: Total of all items listed above the Group total item. Prerequisite is the use of group headings to define the item blocks. Optional items are not included in the group total.
-
Group total with optional items: Behaves like the group total, includes optional items in the group total.
Steps: Inserting a group total
-
Click Insert Special Field and select Group Heading as the special field. Insert a name that will be displayed in bold in the document as a heading and optionally add a description.
-
Add items to the positions.
-
Click Insert Special Field and select Group Total as the special field. Insert a designation that will be displayed in bold in the document as a total caption.
-
Check the offer in the preview.
With a page break you can take a whole section to the next page for long offers to get a nice visual representation.
Steps:
-
Click Insert Special Field and select Page break as the special field.
-
Add items to the positions.
-
Check the offer in the preview.
In addition to the item image, you can also add other images to your offer if you want to include a reference such as a certificate, logo or diagram.
Steps:
-
Click Insert Special Field and select Image as the special field.
-
Enter a Designation to get a bold heading above the image. (mandatory field)
-
Enter a description to add a paragraph of text above the image. (Optional)
-
Select a file under Image and add it.
-
Enter the width and height of the image in millimetres. If you do not select a size, the default will be 30mm x 30mm. (Optional)
-
Click on Save to insert the image at the bottom of the position table.
Note
You can move the image to another position using drag & drop or the arrow keys.
You can edit positions in documents by clicking on the edit icon .
With optional articles you can offer your customers offer items that are not included in your scope of supply and services. By default, they are not included in the total.
Steps:
-
Add an item to the positions.
-
Click on edit and set the item to optional.
-
Click Save.
-
The item is marked Optional in the document and excluded from the total.
Note
If you want to mark items as optional but include them in the total, you can also add these items under a group heading. You can of course adapt the item names in the offer textually.
You can also overprint the price in the offer with an alternative text for each item if you do not want to indicate an amount in euros but, for example, a flat rate or a price according to expenditure.
Steps:
-
Click on edit and enter a text in the alternative text price, e.g. "according to expenditure".
-
Click Save.
To calculate quantities and prices, you can use variables to insert formulas into offers.
In the position table you can apply functions to all items entered there, create templates or update positions.
If you repeatedly create similar quotations with articles and bills of material or special texts, you can save a quotation as a template. You can insert this document template into an empty new offer document.
Steps Create voucher template:
-
Click on Voucher templates and select Create as template and give the template a label, e.g. Production material costs (offer 100007).
-
Click Save.
Note
When saving the voucher template, the project from the quotation is used. Note that, depending on the rights concept, the template is only visible to users who are allowed to view this project.
Steps Insert voucher template:
-
Create a new empty offer.
-
Click on Voucher templates and select a template with Insert, e.g. Production material costs (Offer 100007).
-
The template with the items is inserted into the offer.
Note
Alternatively, you can copy offers via the action menu. In this case the positions are taken over into the new offer draft. You can overwrite the customer data by entering and loading a different customer number.
You can reload data of the item positions from the item master via Update positions. The previous prices, texts, discounts etc. will be overwritten. It is no longer possible to reset to the previous state.
Note
The function is only available in draft mode. As soon as a document is released, you can no longer reload the items from the item master or have them overwritten automatically.
You can give a percentage discount on all offer positions.
Steps Apply discount to positions:
-
Click on Discount in % on all items and enter the discount as a number e.g. 10.
-
Click Ok. The discount is entered in the column Discount on all positions.
Note
You can reset the discount by entering the number zero (= 0) in Discount in % on all positions.
Note
You can delete discounts for individual items by editing individual items and taking the discount value from the per item field.