Skip to content
Sign inEarly access

Navigate

Request early accessSign in
NLEN

Quotes

Make a quote in your own brand, with lines and VAT, have it signed and sent to your customer, and let the customer approve it in the customer portal.

DocumentationQuotes

A quote is what you propose to a customer: what you will do, what it costs and until when that holds. In Denkploeg you make it as a draft, adjust it on the paper itself, sign it, and the customer approves it in the customer portal. Quotes belong to the Relations package (also in Business and Everything, and during the trial): you find them under Quotes at the top of Relations, and on the page of every relation. Without the package you can read existing quotes but not make new ones.

How it works

  1. Make a draft. Choose the relation, give the quote a title and optionally a deal. It gets the next number straight away, such as 2026-O-0231. Numbers count up per workspace and per year without gaps. That is why a quote is never deleted, only withdrawn.
  2. Adjust it on the paper. You see the quote as the customer gets it, in your own brand. Click in a line to change it; the totals update right away. On the right you choose the template (Tight, Spacious or With image) and override colour, typeface, logo and paper for this quote only, with what your brand profile itself offers.
  3. Send for signing. Sending is a proposal. It waits in To sign for a signature with a code from your authenticator, because the quote goes to a customer and a sent email cannot be recalled. The card shows who the quote goes to, what is in it and which message the customer gets. What you sign is shown in full: the introduction, every line with quantity, price, VAT and frequency, and the terms. A link or address in the title is replaced by [link] in the email, so the only link in the email is the one to the customer portal.
  4. The customer approves. The customer gets an email with their own link to the quote. They do not have to log in. They see the same quote as you, without edit fields, and choose Approve or Ask a question.

Calculating

All amounts are in whole cents. Each line is quantity times price, rounded to whole cents. VAT is calculated per rate (21, 9 or 0 percent) over the lines with that rate. One-off costs and fixed monthly costs are shown separately and are never added together. A discount is a line with a negative amount. Showing VAT is presentation and not bookkeeping: your accountant stays leading.

Statuses

  • Draft. Only you see it and you can change it.
  • Sent. The customer has the email. The quote is now unchangeable.
  • Viewed. The customer opened the link.
  • Approved. The customer approved. This is evidence and no longer changes.
  • Declined. You recorded that the customer said no. The deal stays open.
  • Expired. The validity has passed. The customer can no longer approve.
  • Withdrawn. You withdrew the quote. The customer's link then stops working.

The timeline of a quote shows what happened. If the email did not go out, "Sent to the customer" is followed by the line "Email not sent, back to draft": the quote is a draft again and the link does not work. You can propose it again.

You no longer change a quote that has been sent. To change something, make a new version: a new draft with the same lines and a new number. When you send that, the old one is withdrawn, unless the customer already approved it.

What the customer sees and does

The customer opens their link and sees the quote and nothing else: no notes, no other customers, nothing from your pipeline. To approve they enter their name and tick that they agree to the quote and the terms. We keep their name, the time, the address they approved from and a fingerprint of exactly the version they saw. That is a simple electronic signature: evidence for a quote, not a qualified signature. Approving works only once, and only while the quote is open and not expired.

For a large amount the link alone is not enough: a forwarded email cannot sign on behalf of the recipient. The customer then asks on the page for a six-digit code, which goes to the email address of the recipient on the quote (never to an address the customer types themselves). The code is valid for fifteen minutes, works once, allows five attempts. If the customer asks again while the code is still valid, the same code is sent once more (a new one only comes when the previous one no longer counts, at most one every five minutes and five an hour). After twenty attempts on one quote, approval with a code is closed until you send a new version, which raises an alarm. The code only goes to the address the quote was sent to: if that address changes afterwards, you have to send the quote again. We only keep that the approval was confirmed with a code. The amount that counts is what is one-off plus twelve months of what is per month, incl. VAT. The threshold is currently 5,000 euros.

If a newer version of the quote has been sent in the meantime, the old one can no longer be signed: the page says so and points to the link in the latest email.

If the customer has a question, they ask it on the same page. You see the question on the quote, the quote stays open and you answer yourself, by email or phone.

The customer page sets no cookies, loads no third-party scripts and is not indexed by search engines. The link works until thirty days after the validity of the quote, so the customer can still see how things stood. If you withdraw the quote, the link stops working at once.

Having it signed

Besides approval in the customer portal you can have a sent quote signed by one or more signers, in order. Below the quote is the Signing panel: enter a name, an email address and optionally a role for each signer and choose how long the link lasts (thirty days by default, never longer than the quote is valid). Having it signed is a proposal that waits in To sign for a signature with a code, because the first signer receives an email.

  • A personal link per signer. They do not need to log in. The link works once to sign and expires by itself. We only keep a fingerprint of the link. The next signer only gets their link after the previous one has signed.
  • Draw or type. The signer first reads the pdf of the quote and then signs with a signature on the screen or types their name. They can also refuse, with a reason; the request then ends and the quote stays open.
  • Reminders. Whoever has not signed after three days gets a reminder, and another after seven days. Each reminder has a new link; the old one stops working.
  • Evidence. At every step we keep the time, the email address, the IP address and the device, in a trail that is only ever added to, and the sha256 of the pdf that was signed. The full IP address and the device are kept in that trail for 730 days and then removed. If anything about the pdf changed, signing is no longer possible.
  • The signed document. After the last signature all signers and you receive the signed pdf by email, with a signature page and an evidence certificate listing every event. The certificate holds the signers' names and email addresses, a truncated IP address (to /24 or /48) and no device: the document never changes again and goes to all parties. The full address stays only in the sender's evidence trail, for 730 days.
  • Approval of the quote. Approval through signing follows the same rules as in the customer portal: the quote must be open, not replaced by a newer version and not changed. Above the threshold of 5,000 euro the quote is only approved if a signer has the email address of the contact person on the quote (just as the code in the portal goes to that address). Otherwise the document is signed but the quote stays open; the Signing panel says so. Signing emails are limited to 50 per workspace per day.

This is a simple electronic signature: proof of who, when and what, not a qualified signature. Never give a signer someone else's link: the IP address and device in the evidence would then be the wrong ones.

The pdf

Download pdf uses your browser's print function, with a print style that only prints the sheet. Choose Save as pdf in the print window. The customer can do the same.

Who can do what

Everyone who works in the workspace can read quotes. Making, changing, withdrawing and proposing to send a quote needs the right to write quotes, which a maker, administrator and owner have. Signing is done by someone with that right who may also sign, so an administrator or owner. A reader sees the screens without buttons that change anything. A customer who is a guest in the portal sees no quotes.

The price list

Your workspace has a price list with products: a name, the description that goes on the line, a price, the VAT rate and whether it is one-off or per month. You put a product away when you no longer use it; it keeps existing. If you pick a product for a quote, the line becomes a copy: a new price never changes a quote that already exists. The screens for the price list follow; for now it lives in the core.

What is not possible yet

The price list screens, the director setting up a draft for you, a pdf made on the server, sending a quote again and a reminder shortly before it expires come later. Invoices, payments and bookkeeping belong to a later phase and do not affect the quote.