Online Quotes

[Brennan]

Hi mvasquez , How do you complete the quote? Are you manually doing it in the admin by converting it to an order or do you send the quote to customers and they complete the checkout process themselves

Are there two needs here around shipping:

1. Bypass Shipping Altogether since the quote price includes shipping costs
2. Offer custom shipping rate only for this one quote

I can file a feature request for this and I may have a short term work around for you as well, just want to get clarity on the specific needs.

[delcorsets]

Brennan mvasquez I'll jump in on this as well - we're also really looking forward to using this, but there are a few pain points that actually make it somewhat difficult to create quotes.

Having price groups work with the Quote module seems like a pretty important core feature. If Volume Pricing exists for a product, when that product is initially added to a quote, the volume pricing should be displayed.. we want to offer negotiated discounts off of the price a customer would normally pay, so seeing that volume discount is necessary to know what they would be paying through the front of the website at various quantity levels.

Also, if a customer is already part of a price group, the quote really needs to pull in the discounted price they would be paying. If they are requesting a quote for bumping up their volume to receive a higher discount then I would really like to see the price group price they are already receiving - this will help to determine how much more we might be able to discount.

A dream feature would be for the Quotes module to "remember" what customers were quoted, or add the quoted rates to a price group that is then assigned to that customer.

[delcorsets]

Can customers be added to Availability Groups via template code the same way they can be added to Price Groups? If so, maybe Quote Customers can be added to a Quote Availability Group that would offer a shipping method of "Shipping Included in Quote" with no charge?

[mvasquez]

Brennan, what we do is place an actual "order" without payment (using COD method gated to our internal IP addresses). We need to be able to provide customers a quote inclusive of shipping as we do not offer free shipping based on the industrial nature and size of our products.

What I'd like to be able to do is have the standard shipping methods like the ones for an order available within the quotes system, so we can apply our Advanced Shipping Manager logic on a quote and provide a customer exactly what they would pay if it converts. Using orders today creates confusion and headache as it inflates sales $, can lead to accidentally pulling quotes as actual orders, etc.

[Brennan]

mvasquez Got it. So you're placing the orders manually via the admin, but you want to be able to preview shipping costs in admin before you convert it to an order. Thanks for the clarity.

delcorsets All those are reasonable requests.

Let me check with the team on getting these addressed.

[mvasquez]

Brennan - correct, today we aren't able to use the Manage Quotes module at all, so we make an actual "order" in the system and don't apply payment and hold it until the customer approves. Quite messy. Would just love the ability to add shipping to the Manage Quotes module so it functions like normal checkout flow if we select "Calculate Shipping"; so it fits the use case of those who don't care to include shipping.

[mvasquez]

Brennan - any updates on this?

[Brennan]

We do have have open issues for these item but no progress yet. I'll try to get some timing.

[mvasquez]

Thanks!!

[mvasquez]

Is there a notification when the customers responds to a quote in the My Account screen; IE they add a request.. .I see in Manage Quotes the status is now "Response Needed"; how would customer service know otherwise? Can we trigger an email notification somewhere?

[cpp-dev]

mvasquez Maybe this is a spot where the Order Queue/workflow system could be useful. -- https://docs.miva.com/json-api/order-queues-workflows

[mvasquez]

Brennan , just seeing if anything was updated on this from the eariler thread. cpp-dev I'll have to look into that and see what options I have.

[oliverands]

So I'm following up on something I posted quite some time ago here.

In the past, I was using this module with legacy price groups. With those price groups, I could assign a customer to a quote and the item's pricing would update to their price group's pricing automatically when I created the quote. The quote showed price group pricing without my having to do anything, and that pricing carried through the whole checkout process.

Since then, I have deprecated my legacy price groups and moved to the newer model of price group. The type of price group I use most often with quotes now is Markup from Cost. Now when I assign a customer and add items, pricing remains normal without applying the price group discount. It's not until the customer clicks on the link to access the quote, logs in, and then adds the items in the quote to a basket that pricing is updated to price group pricing.

This is in line with what others have reported about price groups not applying on quotes.

For what it's worth, it seems like the module works as it should with legacy price groups but not with the newer style price groups.