Proposals & contracts

A proposal is composed and emailed in one step. There is no draft stage: the moment you send it, the estimate is locked and the customer link is live. The contact needs an email address on file, or the send is refused.

1. 1Open the estimate and click Compose proposal at the bottom of the Pricing & margin panel. Save any unsaved changes first, or the button stays off.
2. 2Fill in What the customer reads: Project overview, Scope of work, Inclusions, Exclusions, and a Timeline note. All of it is optional, and anything you leave blank is left off the document.
3. 3Check the other folds: Pricing detail, Payment schedule, Maintenance plan if you sell one, and your Warranty language (locked, seeded from your settings).
4. 4Confirm the job site state, then click Send proposal.
5. 5The customer is emailed a link and you land on the proposal page, where you can copy the link, resend it, and watch the status.

Your costs and margin are never shown. Whichever level you pick, Managolio splits the quoted price across the rows by cost share, so the parts always add up to the price on the page.

1. 1Lump sum only: one total investment figure, no breakdown.
2. 2Category subtotals: subtotals by category (Materials, Labor, and so on) summing to the total.
3. 3Full line items: every line item with an allocated price.

The schedule starts from your org default and is editable for this one proposal. It has to add up to 100% and every milestone needs a label, or Send proposal stays off. Deposit rules vary by state: several cap residential deposits (commonly one third; in California the lesser of $1,000 or 10%), and others, like New York, require deposits to be held in escrow. Managolio does not enforce those limits, so check the rules where you work.

1. 1Open the Payment schedule fold in the Compose proposal dialog. Its header shows the running percentage even when the fold is shut.
2. 2Edit the labels and percentages, drag rows to reorder them, or click Add milestone.
3. 3Each row shows the dollar amount it works out to at this price.

Needs the Maintenance module switched on in Settings → Modules. The plan is signed along with the proposal and starts billing once the job becomes a project.

1. 1In the Compose proposal dialog, open the Maintenance plan fold and turn on Add a recurring / maintenance plan.
2. 2Add the lines, pick a frequency and a start date, and set how it ends.
3. 3The customer sees it on the proposal under Ongoing service, with the per-invoice total and the cadence.
4. 4When you convert the accepted proposal to a project, the recurring invoice schedule is created for you.

The link opens a branded proposal in any browser. No account, no password, nothing to install.

1. 1They see your logo, the scope, the Investment figure, the payment schedule, your warranty language, and your company details with the license number for that state.
2. 2Download PDF gives them a copy for their records.
3. 3To accept, they type their full name, tick the consent box, and click Accept & sign.
4. 4To decline, they type their name, click Decline, then Confirm decline. The second click is deliberate, so a mis-tap cannot kill a live deal.
5. 5Their name, the date, the consent sentence they were shown, and their IP and device are recorded as their electronic signature.

Proposals lists everything you have sent a customer to sign, one-time proposals and recurring service plans together, with a Type column telling them apart. Owners, Operations Managers and Estimators can see it. Crew cannot.

1. 1Sent: emailed, not opened yet.
2. 2Viewed: the customer opened their link. Owners and Operations get an email the first time, which is the best moment to call. Your own previews never trigger it.
3. 3Accepted or Declined: they answered.
4. 4Expired: the window ran out with no answer.
5. 5Superseded: a newer version of the estimate replaced this one and closed its link.
6. 6The cards across the top count Awaiting response, Accepted, Declined and Expired, and show your win rate and anything expiring within 7 days.

One click from the customer sets off the whole chain.

1. 1The estimate is marked Accepted and the deal moves itself to Won on your pipeline.
2. 2Owners and Operations get an instant "Proposal accepted" email.
3. 3The exact document they signed is rendered to PDF and filed in Documents under Contract, signature block and all. It shows in the customer portal under Your documents once the job is a project.
4. 4A Convert to project button appears at the bottom of the proposal.

A decline marks the estimate Declined and emails Owners and Operations. It does not move the deal to Lost, so mark that yourself once you are sure. For silence, three things chase for you.

1. 1After 5 days with no answer, Managolio creates a follow-up task on the deal, assigned to whoever owns it.
2. 2Your Dashboard raises a "proposals awaiting response" alert linking straight to Proposals.
3. 3The customer gets a reminder email 3 days before the proposal expires. Turn it off in Settings → Customer emails → Proposal expiring soon.

A sent proposal stays open for 30 days, ending at the end of that day in your business timezone. Resend is for a customer who has not answered yet. Once they have accepted or declined, the price is settled and the only way forward is a new version.

1. 1To resend, open the proposal and click Resend. Copy link gives you the same link to paste into a text or your own email.
2. 2Resending a lapsed proposal gives it a fresh 30 days, so the date in the customer email is one the link actually survives.
3. 3To re-quote, go to Estimates → New estimate and pick the same lead. That starts the next version.
4. 4Composing a proposal on the new version closes every older proposal on that lead, marks those estimates Superseded, and kills their customer links, so nobody can accept the price you replaced.

Useful when a customer asks to see the breakdown. It changes the display only, never the price, and their live link updates.

1. 1Open the proposal and click the "..." button in the header.
2. 2Under Pricing detail shown to customer, pick Lump sum only, Category subtotals, or Full line items.
3. 3Once a proposal is accepted, declined or superseded this is locked, so the filed copy keeps matching what they signed.

Customers respond from their own link. These buttons exist for the yes you got in the driveway.

1. 1Open the proposal and click Mark as accepted or Mark as declined at the bottom of the document, then confirm.
2. 2Marking it accepted does everything a customer acceptance does: the estimate locks, the deal moves to Won, and the proposal is filed.
3. 3No electronic signature is recorded, because there was not one. A blank signer on an accepted proposal means it was not signed through the app.

Converting is the sales to operations hand-off, and it is the moment the contract record is written.

1. 1Open the accepted proposal and click Convert to project.
2. 2The contract is created at the accepted price, stamped Signed, and pointed at the PDF the customer signed. It shows on the project Overview under Contract.
3. 3The proposal's payment schedule becomes the project's milestones: the first is a Deposit, the last is Final, the rest are Progress. Bill them from the project's payment schedule.
4. 4The lead needs a street address before it can convert, or the crew has nowhere to go.
5. 5By default only an accepted estimate can convert. Relax it in Settings → Estimating → Project conversion when a verbal yes is enough for you.

Owners and Operations Managers set these once, and every new proposal starts from them. Proposals already sent keep the language and schedule they went out with, so changing a default never rewrites them.

1. 1Settings → Invoicing → Contract defaults: your default payment schedule, the Warranties switch, the default warranty period, and your default warranty language. Leave the language blank to keep warranties on but omit the section.
2. 2Settings → Estimating → Customer proposal: the default pricing detail new proposals start with.
3. 3Settings → Estimating → Project conversion: whether an accepted proposal is required before a job can be converted.
4. 4Settings → Customer emails: the expiring-soon reminder sent to the customer.

Which state a job is in decides which of your license numbers prints on the proposal, and it carries onto the project when you win. It follows the work, not your address and not the customer's, so Managolio asks rather than guessing.

1. 1Pick the state in the Compose proposal dialog. The address on file is shown above the picker as a reference.
2. 2It saves the moment you pick it, whether or not you go on to send.
3. 3If you have no license recorded for that state, or the one on file has expired, you get a heads-up that the document will go out with no license number. You can send anyway. Add or update it in Settings → Licenses.