Idea: Manage Quotes Module

[seanboas]

Hello, I submitted this as a support ticket, but I was told to repost it here.

We have been wanting to use the Manage Quotes Module for our sales staff, but there are some features that are missing that we think are necessary for giving the customer an accurate quote.

I was looking on the Miva forum and saw other customers with a similar issue, and it appears they are doing the same thing for a workaround that we are, which is to just start a manual order and delete it or leave it in the order queue.

I was thinking, a good solution for this would be the ability to convert an order to a quote.

This way the sales teams can still use the process they are familiar with to give the customer a quote with price groups, tax, shipping, etc. but then have the added benefit of giving the customer the option to pick up the now quote from their account page and complete the order on their time.

This would also help with managing orders and reporting, by removing the unfinished order and turning it into a quote.

Thank you

[Bruce - PhosphorMedia]

Depending on complexity, once of the simplier ways to create a quote systems is just to repurpose a Payment module like COD and call it Quote. You'd need to go through some of your template code (like OPAY/INVC and Emails and add a conditional based in the g.paymentmethod = 'COD', but that's about all. Then, you'd need an actual way to capture funds. There are several method of just collecting monies and the best one would be based on needs.

Granted, this isn't a full on "quote system", but works for many companies who only need occasional or low volume method for handling quotes.

That being said, a simple thing miva could do is offer a "Quote" payment module and backend support to allow for "Entering Payment" later. Ideally, the customer would visit their account system, see the Quote, and Click "Pay Now". This would take them to OSEL with the quoted items in the basket (And possibly a fixed price.) This, IMO, would work for the majority of "Quote" users. Miva's current system, while more robust, is frankly an overkill for most.

[seanboas]

The existing Module does almost everything we want. Except it doesn't have the ability to quote tax and shipping, (and possibly price groups as I read on another forum post). Ideally for us, if it could do those things, we would start every manual order as a quote, convert it to an order just before accepting payment.

[seanboas]

The update for the order quotes module is outstanding! Thank you Miva! One question I have is if there is any way to move quotes from Utilities > Manage Quotes, into the Order Processing section?

Thank you!

[Brennan]

You can't move its location to Order Processing, but you can bookmark it so it always one click away.

Can you give me some insight to your workflow where it makes it better to have it under Order Processing?

[seanboas]

Absolutely. With the new update to the quoting module, I believe our sales team will be starting every new order as a quote then converting it to an order if they close the sale. This is helpful for us because we have customers who will call for information but end up not placing the order at that time, then calling back a week or two later to complete their order. We believe it will also help with the accuracy of our reporting because we will no longer have those orders that were really just quotes with no amount actually captured going into our sales report.

Typically our sales department does not have permissions to view utilities, they are only granted the permissions required to do their basic sales process.

The other function of the module, the ability for customers to request a quote is unlikely to ever be utilized for us, and we will probably hide/disable it. I personally feel like it lends itself to a bad customer experience.