What is recorded when a customer accepts a quote
What the Industry CRM keeps when a customer accepts a quotation online, why a sent quote is frozen, and when acceptance becomes an issued invoice.
By Achekam · · 4 min read · For Running a business businesses in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya
Launching soon. The Industry CRM add-on described in this article is launching soon. This article describes it as it will work at launch.
Late on a Thursday night, a customer opens the quotation you sent and clicks to accept it. The next morning the sales team celebrates. But what, exactly, do you have? A promise to pay? A contract? An invoice? And if the customer later says the price was different, or that they never accepted at all, what can you show?
Online acceptance is convenient for everyone, but its value depends entirely on what is recorded at the moment it happens and on what happens next. This article sets out precisely what Achekam's Industry CRM keeps when a customer accepts a quotation, and how that acceptance turns into an invoice.
What the customer does
The customer opens the quotation from a link, types their name and ticks a box to accept. Keeping acceptance to those few actions matters: every extra step between "yes" and a recorded acceptance is a chance for the deal to stall.
Typing a name and ticking a box is a clear, deliberate act. It shows that someone with access to the link chose to accept this quotation. Whether it is enough for a particular deal is a judgement for you: a routine service quote may need nothing more, while a large or long contract may also call for a signed agreement, which a workflow step can send for electronic signature. For the legal background, UNCITRAL's Model Law on Electronic Signatures sets reliability criteria for treating an electronic signature as equivalent to a handwritten one, and many national e-signature laws are based on it.
What is kept with the acceptance
Alongside the name the customer typed, the Industry CRM keeps the customer's IP address and browser.
Those details help when an acceptance is questioned. They show where the acceptance came from and on what kind of device, which makes it much harder for anyone to claim it was invented after the fact. They do not prove the identity of the person in the way a check of an identity document would, so for high-value work, the quotation should go to an e-mail address you know belongs to the person with authority to accept it.
Keep your own side of the record tidy as well. Note who sent the quotation and to which address, and keep any e-mail in which the customer asked questions or negotiated before accepting. Together with what the Industry CRM keeps, that gives a complete account of how the deal was agreed.
A sent quotation is frozen
Once a quotation has been sent, it is frozen. It cannot be quietly edited; any change goes out as a revision.
That rule protects both sides. The customer can be sure the quotation they accepted is the one they read. The business can be sure that what was accepted is what it priced, not something a colleague altered afterwards. If a customer negotiates a change, send a revision and let them accept that; the history then shows each version and which one was accepted.
The acceptance drafts the invoice
When the customer accepts, the acceptance drafts the invoice in receivables. The invoice is drafted from what the customer accepted, so nobody retypes it and nothing is lost between the sales team and the accounts.
A draft is not yet a bill. In Achekam, a customer invoice starts as a draft that can be changed or deleted. Issuing it takes the next number in the business's sequence and posts it to the ledger as debtors, sales and output VAT. Once issued, it can be downloaded as a PDF on your letterhead and e-mailed, with or without a pay link.
Leaving the invoice as a draft gives someone the chance to check it before it goes out: that the work has been scheduled, that a deposit is right, or that the customer's details are complete.
Issuing at once needs recorded authority
Some businesses want the invoice issued the moment a quotation is accepted, so the customer receives it while the decision is fresh. The Industry CRM allows that, but only with an administrator's recorded authority. The decision to bill automatically is made deliberately, by someone accountable for it, and it is recorded.
In South Africa, the set-up wizard also shows a second-issuer rule at R50,000. The administrator can keep it, set another amount or switch it off, and the choice is recorded. Read the second-issuer rule before deciding.
Where acceptance sits in the wider flow
Quotations do not appear from nowhere. When a lead is converted, the Industry CRM creates the customer and the industry's main record at once and starts that record's workflow.
Pipelines can also hold a record back from some stages until set conditions are met, such as a customer being named, an amount being set or a signature being done. That keeps a deal from being shown as further along than the paperwork supports.
A short checklist for online acceptance
- Send quotations only to people with authority to accept them.
- Make changes by revision, never by editing a sent quotation.
- Decide whether any invoice should be issued at once, and record who holds that authority.
- Check each drafted invoice before issuing, unless you have chosen otherwise.
- Where the deal needs a signed contract as well, send it for signature through the workflow.
How the accepted figures reach the right revenue accounts is covered in when your CRM posts straight to your ledger, and a software business's version of the journey in from trial to won.
Look at the last quotation your business lost to a dispute or a misunderstanding, and ask which of these records would have settled it.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
