Converting to a quote

Once a lead is worth pricing, Convert to quote turns it into a real project and costing.

What it creates

• A project, with the lead’s contact as its client
• A costing on that project, ready to price
• The link back to the lead, so its history is not lost

You are then in the ordinary estimating flow — documents, take-off, cost centers, BOQ. See Your first project, end to end.

Naming the costing

You are asked for a costing name. Use the same convention as anywhere else: name it for what it is.

Tender — Rev A tells you something in six months. Costing 1 does not, and the moment the client asks for a cheaper option you will have two of them.

See Costings and templates.

Blank costing or from a template

Blank costing starts empty.

Starting from one of your templates is nearly always better — your standard cost centres and the items you carry on every job of that type. You then delete what does not apply rather than trying to remember what does.

Deleting down is both faster and safer. You forget to add things; you rarely forget to delete something sitting in front of you with no quantity against it.

Convert when you start pricing, not when you win

The point of converting is to price the job. A lead that stays a lead while you build an estimate somewhere else defeats the purpose — the pipeline stops reflecting what is actually happening.

Convert late enough to mean it

The opposite failure is converting everything on arrival.

Every conversion creates a project and a costing. Do it for every enquiry and your Projects list fills with jobs that were never real, which is how a project list stops being useful.

Convert when a lead reaches Quoting — when you have decided to spend the hours. Before that it belongs on the board.

The job already exists as a project

Sometimes the project was set up before the lead was, or by hand. Link to project (next to Convert to quote) attaches the lead to an existing project instead of creating another one. Pick the project from the list; a project already linked to a different lead is greyed out so two leads never claim one job. The lead moves to Quoting and shows the project’s links. Unlink on the lead undoes it; the project is not changed.

Linking also works from the other direction. On Project settings, the client dialog has a Fill from a lead dropdown: the project’s linked lead comes first, then every open lead. Choosing one fills the name, email, phone and address from the lead, and links the lead to the project if it was not already.

What happens to the lead

It stays, linked to the project it produced, and moves to Quoted once the price is out.

When the job is won, mark the lead Won. That closes the loop, and it is what makes the board’s history worth anything: over a year you can see how many enquiries became quotes, and how many quotes became jobs.

Those two ratios are the most useful numbers a builder can have about their own business, and almost nobody has them — because it requires marking leads won and lost honestly for twelve months.

From the client’s side

The contact on the lead becomes the client on the project, so their details carry across.

Check the name before you issue anything. The client name should read the way the contract will — A & J Hendricks, not the first name of whoever happened to send the enquiry. See Clients.