Quoting software for freelancers

Why a quote should become an invoice, not inspire one

When a client accepts a quote, they have agreed to a specific list of items at specific prices. The invoice that follows should be that list, unchanged. Retyping it introduces a class of error that is both embarrassing and expensive: a rate transposed, a line dropped, a discount forgotten.

In Flowzivo a quote converts to an invoice in one action. The items, the rates, the client, the tax treatment and the discount all carry across, and the invoice takes the next number in your sequence. If the client accepted only part of the quote, you edit the invoice — but you start from what was agreed rather than from a blank page.

Optional line items change how clients read a quote

A quote with one number invites a yes or a no. A quote with a core scope and two clearly marked optional additions invites a conversation, and conversations are where scope grows.

Flowzivo marks a line as optional and keeps it out of the total, so the client sees the committed price and the extensions separately. It reads as a considered proposal rather than a price tag, and it costs you nothing to include.

Deposits, and asking for them without awkwardness

A deposit is the single most effective protection a freelancer has against a client who disappears, and the reason most people skip it is that it feels awkward to raise. It stops feeling awkward when it is a printed line on a standard document rather than a special request in an email.

Flowzivo can generate a deposit invoice from an accepted quote at a percentage you set. The deposit is recorded against the job, so the final invoice shows the balance rather than the full amount, and you are never in the position of having to work out what is still owed.

Expiry dates do quiet work

A quote without a validity date stays open forever, which sounds generous and is actually a problem: it lets a client come back in eight months expecting last year's rate, and it leaves your pipeline full of things that will never close.

Every quote in Flowzivo carries a validity period, shown on the document. Once it passes, the quote reads as expired in your own list too, which is how you find out that the pipeline you thought you had is smaller than you thought.

Quoting a price you have actually worked out

The hardest part of a quote is not writing it, it is deciding the number. Most freelancers quote from a mixture of what they charged last time and what they think the client will accept, which over a few years produces a rate that has drifted downwards without anyone deciding it should.

The useful discipline is to build the quote from hours and a rate, even for fixed-price work, and to keep the working. If a job takes forty hours and your rate is eighty, the quote is three thousand two hundred, and if that feels too high, the honest conversation is about scope rather than about the rate.

Flowzivo keeps your hourly rate and each client's rate on file, and quote lines take a quantity and a unit price, so the arithmetic is visible while you build the document rather than done in your head beforehand.

What to send with the quote

A quote lands better with two things attached: a short statement of what is not included, and a note on what happens if the scope changes. Both feel adversarial to write and both save the relationship later, because the argument they prevent is the one that happens in month three.

There is room for this in the notes field of every quote, and since the note carries into the invoice, the terms the client agreed to are on the document they eventually pay against.

Questions