Express quotes are a central tool in Leadtime for billing individual smaller customer inquiries quickly, cleanly and legally compliant. They are aimed at service companies that not only provide project-based work, but also carry out many small, spontaneous activities for their customers - be it a support measure, a mini-feature or an addition to an existing order.

In such cases, the customer expects a concrete, comprehensible quotation before the work begins - but without the need to create an elaborate quotation folder straight away. This is exactly what express quotes are for.

In practice, it often looks like this:

A customer writes into the system or calls: "We'd like three more fields in our contact form."

This request is recorded and described in the ticket. Then someone from the team checks how long this task is likely to take - with a developer, for example. Result: 4 hours.

Now this time should be formally quoted - in other words, the customer should receive clear price information with the number of hours x hourly rate = quoted price. And this is exactly what can be done with just a few clicks using the express quote function.

Before you can create an express quote, the following requirements must be met:

Navigate to a ticket that is part of an external project and open it in the detail view.

Enter an effort estimate in the sidebar under Time frame.

Example: 4 hours

This information will be used later to calculate the offer price.

In the ticket sidebar, scroll down to the "Express quote" section .

Click on "+ Create express quote".

A dialog box opens. Fill in the following fields:

Leadtime calculates automatically:

You can send the express quote in two ways:

In both cases, the customer can accept or reject the offer online with one click.

The offer is displayed in the ticket with the status "Pending". As soon as the customer accepts the offer, the status changes to "Accepted". The team can then begin with the implementation - without any additional queries.

The quotation process is also fully documented in the task comment history: Who offered what and when, what was the price, and what did the customer decide?

The quotation status is displayed directly in the ticket. The possible statuses:

As soon as the customer responds, the status is updated automatically.

You can also see when the offer was accepted or rejected and by whom.

As soon as you send the express quote, the contact person selected in the ticket receives an automatically generated email from Leadtime. This e-mail contains:

This link takes the customer to a professionally designed offer view where they can see the following information:

At the bottom of the page, the customer can click to

Both actions are immediately documented in the ticket, including the time stamp and name of the contact. This means that the offer approval is saved in an audit-proof manner.

The customer sees online:

Express quotes are the ideal tool for quoting even small orders quickly, cleanly and in a documented manner. They improve communication with the customer, save time and avoid discussions. At the same time, they ensure complete transparency in your service process - without any additional effort.