DealsQuotes
A number somebody said yes to. Pick from your catalogue, and every line freezes what it cost the day you added it: price, discount, and the tax exactly as it resolved.
A catalogue, not retyping. With tax that adds up exactly.
What you sell, with its usual price, currency and tax rate, and named rates defined once for the account, held as integers so the arithmetic can’t drift.
- What you sell, with its usual price and currency
- A default tax rate on the items that carry one
- Named tax rates you define once for the account
- Held as whole numbers (13% is stored as 1300) so nothing drifts
- Optional inventory tracking where the thing is countable
Then the line stops moving. Permanently, and on purpose.
Adding a line copies the name and the economics onto the quote. From then on the catalogue can change however it likes: this quote says what the customer read.
- A line copies the name: it does not point at the catalogue
- And the price, quantity, discount and resolved tax with it
- Change the catalogue tomorrow; the quote stays what it was
- Delete the item entirely; the line still prices correctly
- The deal total recomputes from its lines, never typed by hand
Why it works this way. Three consequences worth naming.
A quote is a promise
Somebody read a number and said yes to it. If a price change six weeks later silently rewrote that number, the record would no longer describe the agreement, which is the only thing it is for.
Tax as resolved, not as configured
The line stores the rate’s name, its amount and the breakdown behind it. So a quote from before a rate change still shows the tax that was actually quoted, with its working.
Totals are derived
The deal amount is computed from its lines. Nobody types a total, so nobody can produce a total the lines do not support.
Six lines, one total nobody typed
Every line carrying its own frozen price, discount and resolved tax, and a deal amount computed from them rather than entered beside them.
A quote is internal. The invoice is the thing you send.
Nothing at all. Each line froze its unit price, discount and tax on the day it was added, so every quote already out there still says exactly what the customer read. New lines get the new price.
The quote is unaffected. The line copied the name and the economics rather than pointing at the catalogue entry, so a discontinued product keeps pricing correctly on the deals that already carry it.
Because a computer cannot hold 13% exactly as a decimal, and money arithmetic that drifts by fractions of a cent becomes an accounting problem. Stored as 1300 (hundredths of a percent, whole numbers all the way) it adds up exactly.
Not as a quote document: the customer-facing artefact is the invoice. Today a quote is the internal shape of the deal, and turning it into an invoice is the step that produces something to send.
No to both. There is no expiry date and no approval chain on discounts. Worth knowing if your sales process depends on either; we would rather name it than let you plan around something that is not there.