Quotes

Send clients a proper priced quote, and turn their yes into an invoice the moment they accept it.

What it does

Quoting a job by email and then manually raising an invoice once the client agrees means typing the same line items twice and hoping nothing gets lost in between. Quotes puts a proper quoting workflow inside Blesta itself: your staff build a line-item quote against a client straight from their profile, the client reviews and accepts or rejects it from their own portal (or from a private link if they are not a client yet), and an accepted quote can raise the invoice automatically - with the same numbers the client actually agreed to.

Key features

• Line-Item Quotes With Tax: Build a quote from as many lines as the job needs, each with its own description, quantity, unit cost, and taxable flag, with totals and tax following the client's own billing settings.
• Quote Straight From the Client Profile: A Quotes widget on the staff client profile lists every quote you've sent that client and starts a new one in a click.
• Clients Accept or Reject in Their Portal: A widget on the client home page lists open, accepted, and rejected quotes, with a confirmed accept or reject button on each.
• Automatic Invoice on Acceptance: Turn on automatic invoicing and accepting the quote raises a real Blesta invoice immediately - the quote and invoice stay linked so it can never be raised twice.
• Branded PDF Document: Every quote downloads as a PDF carrying your company details, from both the staff side and the client side.
• Email the Quote With the PDF Attached: Send any quote to the client on demand, or switch on automatic sending so every new quote reaches them the moment you create it.
• Shareable Link for Prospects: Each quote gets its own private link that works without a login, so someone who is not yet a client can review it, download the PDF, and accept or reject it straight from their inbox.
• Valid Until Dates, Response Notes, and Staff Notifications: Give a quote an optional expiry date, let clients leave a note when they respond, and get notified by email the moment they do.

Every action - viewing, creating, editing, deleting, emailing, and duplicating quotes - is its own staff permission, so you control exactly who on your team can do what.

Installing Quotes

Before you start

• If you are on the leased (subscription) licence, the Blesta Club Subscription Manager must be installed and your subscription active. The owned and owned-source licences have no such requirement.

1. Upload the files

Upload the extension folder into your Blesta installation so it lands under your Blesta directory at:

plugins/quotes/

For example, on a typical install: /var/www/html/blesta/plugins/quotes/

2. Install it in Blesta

1. Log in to your Blesta admin area with a staff account that has the Plugins permission under the Settings group in Manage Staff Groups.
2. Go to Settings > Company > Plugins and click the Available tab.
3. Find Quotes in the list and click Install.

3. Grant staff permissions

Blesta registers Quotes' staff permissions on install but grants them to nobody by default - so the Quotes nav link and the client-profile Quotes widget stay hidden for every staff group, administrators included, until you turn them on:

1. Go to Settings > Company > Staff > Groups.
2. Edit each staff group that should use Quotes.
3. Tick the Quotes permissions you want that group to have (viewing, adding, editing, deleting, emailing, and duplicating quotes; the client-profile widget; and the PDF download are each their own checkbox), then save.

Once granted, the Quotes link appears nested inside the Billing menu in the staff nav.

4. Configure it (optional)

Quotes works out of the box with sensible defaults. If you want to change them, go to Settings > Company > Plugins, find Quotes in the Installed list and click Manage, where you can:

• Automatically email a new quote to the client the moment it is created.
• Notify a staff email address whenever a client accepts or rejects a quote.
• Set the quote number format and how many digits it is padded to.

You're ready to go - see the usage guide for a walkthrough of day-to-day use.

Updating Quotes

Upgrading works just like installing: upload the new files over the old ones, then run the upgrade from the same page you installed it on.

1. Back up your current extension files first - good practice before any upgrade.
2. Upload the new version over the existing folder, replacing the old files.
3. Log in to your Blesta admin area and go to Settings > Company > Plugins.
4. Find Quotes and click Update to run the upgrade.

Version-specific notes

Version 2.0.0

• Grant the two new staff permissions. This version adds two new staff actions, "Email Quote to Client" and "Duplicate Quote". Like any new Blesta permission, they are registered on update but granted to nobody, administrators included, until you go to Settings > Company > Staff > Groups, edit each group that should have them, tick the two new Quotes permissions, and save.
• A settings screen is now available. Under Settings > Company > Plugins, click Quotes' Manage link to turn on automatically emailing new quotes to clients, enable staff notifications when a client accepts or rejects (and set the address that receives them), and choose a quote-number format and padding.
• New capabilities. Quotes can now be emailed to clients with the PDF attached, given a "valid until" expiry date, duplicated, and shared with logged-out prospects through a private link. Accepting a quote links the generated invoice back to the quote and never creates a duplicate. Editable email templates ("Quote Delivered" and "Quote Responded") are available under Settings > Company > Emails.

• Contacts now need two permissions, not one. The client quotes widget and the quote PDF download follow Blesta's own contact permissions. Where a client has given a billing or other contact their own portal login, that contact sees the account's quotes - and can accept or reject them - only when both of these are ticked, because access is gated in two independent layers:

  • Quotes - this plugin's own checkbox. It controls whether the contact may reach the quotes widget and the PDF download at all.
  • Quotations - the core area that owns the quote data behind them.

  Both boxes are on the same screen: in the client area, My Information > Contacts, edit the contact, then the Authentication tab. Staff can do the same from the client's profile. Ticking only one of the two is not enough, and it fails with exactly the same message as ticking neither - "You do not have permission to access that resource, please contact the primary account holder to request access". If you grant only Quotes and the contact is still refused, that is the missing Quotations permission, not a fault in the plugin. Previously any contact with a login saw every quote on the account. Primary account holders are not affected, and the tokenized public quote link keeps working for logged-out prospects.

• Answered quotes are now locked. Once a client has accepted or rejected a quote, its lines, totals, currency and expiry can no longer be edited - previously they could, which left the stored quote disagreeing with what the client agreed to and with any invoice already raised from it. The Submit button is hidden on an answered quote; use Duplicate to build a revised quote instead. "Generate Invoice" is likewise offered only on an accepted quote, not on an open or rejected one.

Version 1.1.0

• Grant the new staff permissions. This version declares access permissions for the Quotes staff pages for the first time. Blesta registers them on update but grants them to nobody - so immediately after updating, the Quotes nav entry and the client-profile Quotes widget will be hidden for every staff group, including administrators, until you grant access. Go to Settings > Company > Staff > Groups, edit each group that should have Quotes, tick the Quotes permissions, and save.
• Quote line prices now keep their cents. Unit cost and quantity on quote lines were previously stored as whole numbers, so a price such as 9.99 was silently rounded to 10.00 when saved. The update converts those columns to decimals and all new quotes keep their exact values. Quote lines saved before this update were already rounded in the database and cannot be recovered automatically - review any existing open quotes with non-whole prices and re-enter the correct amounts.

Using Quotes

For your staff

Creating a quote

Open a client's profile and find the Quotes widget. It lists every quote you've ever sent that client, with its status, total, and creation date. Click Add Quote to start a new one.

Give the quote a subject, add as many lines as the job needs (each with a description, quantity, unit cost, and a taxable checkbox), and choose the currency. Totals, subtotal, and tax are calculated for you as you type. Optionally set a Valid Until date - once that day passes, the quote is marked expired everywhere and can no longer be accepted - and tick Automatically generate an invoice when this quote is accepted if you want acceptance to bill the client immediately. Save to create the quote in Open status.

The Quotes list

The main Quotes page (nested under the Billing menu in the staff nav) lists every quote across all your clients, split into Open, Accepted, and Rejected tabs. From here you can open, edit, delete, email, or duplicate any quote a permission allows you to.

Editing a quote

An Open quote can be edited freely - change the lines, totals, currency, or expiry, and save. Once a client has accepted or rejected a quote, its structural fields are locked and the Save button is hidden: the quote now reflects what the client actually agreed to (or turned down), and what may already have been invoiced from it. To offer a revised price, use Duplicate instead to start a fresh, editable copy.

On an Accepted quote, a Generate Invoice button becomes available, letting you raise the linked invoice yourself without waiting for automatic invoicing. It only ever creates one invoice per quote, even if clicked more than once.

Emailing and duplicating a quote

Email to Client sends the quote to the client's email address with the PDF attached, from either the quote list or the edit screen. Duplicate creates a fresh, open copy of the quote with a new number, ready to adjust and send as a follow-up or a revision.

Downloading the PDF

Every quote can be downloaded as a branded PDF carrying your company details, from the Quotes list or the edit screen.

Quotes settings

Go to Settings > Company > Plugins, find Quotes in the Installed list, and click Manage to configure:

• Automatically email new quotes to clients as soon as they're created.
• Notify staff by email whenever a client accepts or rejects a quote, and which address receives that notification.
• Quote number format and padding - set your own prefix and how many digits the number is padded to, so quote numbers read the way the rest of your paperwork does.

For your clients

Reviewing and responding to a quote

Clients see their quotes in a widget on their account home page, split into Open, Accepted, and Rejected. Each open quote has an Accept or Reject option; choosing either opens a confirmation dialog where the client can add an optional note explaining their decision before confirming. Once answered, the quote's status updates immediately and, if the quote was set to invoice automatically, an invoice appears on the account right away.

Clients can download the same branded PDF of any of their quotes.

Responding without an account

If a quote is sent to someone who isn't yet a client, they receive a private link (with the PDF attached) that lets them view the quote, download the PDF, and accept or reject it - with the same optional note - without logging in at all.

Good to know

• A quote's number (shown as something like QUO-0001) is just a formatted label - the underlying record is still tracked by its own internal reference for every action.
• An expired quote (past its Valid Until date) can no longer be accepted, and is clearly marked as expired wherever it appears.
• Granting a client contact access to Quotes also requires giving that contact the core Quotations permission (under the contact's Authentication settings) - both are needed for a contact other than the primary account holder to see and respond to the account's quotes.