Generating a quote: revisions, customer view and approval

Once your bill of quantities is priced, Panzo turns it into a proper commercial quotation: a clean document for the client, a full costing view for your team, revisions you can compare side by side, and an approval gate on risky pricing. This guide is for the sales owners, PMs and estimators who send quotes and answer for the margin on them.

From BOQ to a client-ready quote

A quote is built on the room-wise BOQ you have already laid out by area and work type. Every line freezes the product and the rate it was quoted at, so the money breakdown, sub-total, discount, GST and grand total, is arithmetic you can stand behind. The same lines feed two views of the same quote, and both totals reconcile because they derive from the same data.

• Customer View shows clean scope and pricing, ready to become a PDF. It carries none of your cost, margin, price source, vendor or internal notes. Optional items are listed separately with their own total, and excluded or cancelled lines never touch the customer total.
• Internal Costing shows the full picture for your team: selling versus cost, margin per line, price source, overrides and per-line risk flags (loss, below minimum, low margin, override, missing cost), with a profitability summary on top.

The separation is enforced where the data is read, not just where it is drawn, so a sensitive field cannot leak into the customer view even by accident.

Revisions and version compare

Quotes version fully. Each revision, V1, V2, V3, is its own immutable snapshot in one revision family, so a later version never rewrites an earlier one. When you create a revision, Panzo issues the next V number as a new record, marks the previous one superseded, and re-resolves the price for the revision date. Old revisions and their totals stay intact.

From a quote's Pricing & Revisions section, Compare versions opens a read-only, side-by-side view of any two revisions of the same quote. It shows the total change and which lines were added, removed, changed or unchanged. The comparison respects who is looking: customer-facing viewers see quantity, rate, discount and line-total changes, while cost and margin deltas appear only for users who can edit costing, so there is no partial disclosure.

The approval workflow

Approval is a focused gate on four pricing exceptions, not a generic task system. When a quote hits one, sending it (or marking it customer-accepted) is blocked until an authorised approver signs off. Draft edits and creating revisions are never blocked.

1. Set the rules

   In Control Panel, Approval Rules lets an admin choose, per exception, whether it requires approval and which role approves it. The thresholds themselves stay in their existing homes (price locks, minimum price, margin policy).

2. Request approval

   On the quote's Approvals tab, Panzo shows any detected exceptions. Raise a request; it records a stable fingerprint of the quote's financials.

3. Approve or reject

   The approver must hold the rule's role, and self-approval is blocked. Decisions are kept as an append-only history.

4. Send with confidence

   If the quote's financials change after approval, the approval auto-invalidates and the gate closes again, so an approved discount cannot be quietly widened before sending.

The customer view exposes none of this. Approval status, requests and decisions live only on the internal and approvals views.

Getting the quote to the client

You can download or print the quote to a branded PDF straight from the record, no re-keying. Panzo does not email quotes for you: sending is manual today. Save or download the PDF and attach it yourself, or use a client link to share it. Plan your follow-up (WhatsApp, email) as your own step outside the app.