Quotes & proposals

For trips that don't fit a price list

Private and tailor-made trips are priced one at a time: a honeymoon with three hotels, a family safari with a private driver, a corporate group that wants two extra days. Building these in a spreadsheet and pasting them into an email is slow, and the margin often gets lost between the cost columns. Quotes & proposals builds the trip, the price and the proposal in one place, and turns an accepted proposal into a booking. The plugin is available from the Growth plan.

Building the quote

Each quote has the traveller's details, the number of adults and children, a start date, the number of days and a currency. You build it day by day, adding services to each day: a hotel night, a transfer, a guide, a park fee. Each service has a quantity, a cost and a sell price, and can come from a supplier's rates or be added by hand.

The sell price is cost plus your margin unless you set it yourself. The default margin is 25% on supplier costs (you can set 0 to 300%). A service costing $400 sells at $500. As you add services, you see the total cost, the total sell price and your margin, so you know where you stand before sending. The proposal shows a price per person, with the total split over the travellers.

You can offer choices, such as a good, better and best version of the same trip, with services that only belong to one option, and mark one as recommended. The proposal shows a from-price, and the traveller picks the option they want.

Sending, accepting and booking

Add an introduction and your terms, then send the proposal. It gets a number (Q-00001 and so on) and a validity date, 14 days by default. You can see when it was sent and when the traveller viewed it.

The traveller accepts online. Acceptance creates a booking for a private trip with the deposit to pay, 30% by default, and the balance due on the date you set. On a $4,800 private trip that is $1,440 to confirm. If the Deposits plugin is off, the traveller pays the full price at checkout. If they decline, they can give a reason, which is kept on the quote.

A quote moves from draft to sent, then to accepted (with its booking), declined or expired, so your pipeline of open proposals is always clear.

Setting up Quotes & proposals

1. 1Turn on Quotes & proposals. Switch the plugin on from Plugins (Growth plan and above).
2. 2Set your defaults. Choose the default margin, the deposit to confirm and how many days proposals stay valid.
3. 3Create a quote. Enter the traveller, group size, dates and currency.
4. 4Build the days. Add services to each day with cost and sell prices, and check your margin.
5. 5Add options if useful. Offer good, better and best versions and mark the one you recommend.
6. 6Send the proposal. Add an introduction and terms, then send it and watch for the view and the answer.