The stored Offer process allows multiple employees to participate in the creation, review, and submission of Offers. Upon acceptance, you convert the Offer into a project or a task at the push of a button; if the Invoicing module is used, ZEP automatically creates the associated invoice items for later invoicing.

An Offer goes through the following statuses:

You can directly convert an accepted Offer into a project or insert it as a task/tasks into an existing project. In this process, the Offer Items are created as tasks, and, if possible, Planned Figures are entered. If you use the Invoicing module, ZEP also automatically creates the associated planned Invoice Items based on the Offer Items.

Create Offer Templates, optionally with attachments, e.g., your general terms and conditions (GTC). If you use the Locations & Departments module, please note that an Offer always belongs to a department.

Who is allowed to create an Offer for a customer (with the Locations & Departments module)?

If you use the Offer Creation module, you must first make a few basic settings in ZEP:

Under Administration > Offers > Settings, you specify the following:

Here you can specify which duration of validity should be used as the Default Setting for a new Offer. This setting is preset as the default value during Offer Creation and can, of course, be overwritten.

Task: Reminder for Following Up on Offers

Under Administration > System > Tasks, there is a Task that allows you to be reminded of which Offers have not yet been accepted. Select the Task Reminder for Follow-up of the Offer and specify when the Task should be executed. Set how many days before (e.g., - 3) or how many days after (e.g., + 4) the Offer expires a reminder should occur.

Offer Number (Number Range)

The Offer Number is composed of the following components:

The following Placeholders can be used:

Optionally, you can specify whether the Offer Number is listed with a Version Number.

Here you can optionally set whether the Abbreviation (Initials) of the employee who created an Offer is output on the Offer after the date. You can see the name of the Creator in the "Data" of the Offer (Offer > Data) in the line "Offer file created on... by..." after the date.

Set the File Format in which you want to create Offers or Offer Previews with ZEP in the future.

If you want every employee to be allowed to see all Offers, activate this checkbox. This means that all employees are fundamentally allowed to view all Offers without restrictions. You grant Write Access Permissions for actions under Administration > Offers > Permissions.

If you have selected "No" for this option, you can grant further permissions using the following option.

If you want Project Managers without Budget Responsibility to also be allowed to see the Offers menu item in their projects, activate this checkbox.

Specify here whether an employee may add Keywords:

If you set this to "Yes," an employee can enter or add their own new Keywords when creating or editing an Offer, in addition to selecting existing Keywords. The newly entered Keywords are listed under Administration > Offers > Keywords.

If you want Users with additional rights to be allowed to create Offers, activate this checkbox. You grant permission for individual actions under Administration > Offers > Permissions for actions.

Sending offers by email

If you send offers to your customers by email, you can enter a separate email address for this (deviating from the address specified under Administration > My Company > Email for automatically sent emails). If necessary, specify a sender name, a reply-to address, and a reply-to name.

Factor for converting days into hours

Enter the factor here with which the planned days in the offer should be converted into planned hours of the project/task when a commissioned offer is transferred into a project or task.

Example: Factor 8

If you transfer an offer with an expense or flat-rate item of 5 days into a project or task, 40 (5 x 8) will be entered there as planned hours.

offers must be checked after completion

Here you can set whether your quotes should go through a checking mechanism or not.

Order confirmation

Optionally specify: "Send order confirmation after commissioning". If you specify "Yes" here, ZEP offers you the option "Send order confirmation as mail" for commissioned quotes.

The corresponding mail template can be found under Administration > offers > Mail templates: "Send order confirmation". The quote document is automatically attached to the email as an attachment.

Under the menu item Administration > Offers, you will find the sub-menu items Text Modules, Mail Templates, Permissions, Categories, and Keywords. Additionally, there is the menu item Articles. If you use the Invoicing module, you will find Articles under Administration > Invoicing.

This is a list of your Offer Templates. You can change the order of the templates using the "Up Arrow" or "Down Arrow" symbols. The order determines the sequence in which these templates are displayed in the selection lists. A newly created template is always appended to the end of the list. You use the "Up Arrow" symbol to move the template to the desired position.

To create a new template, click the link Create New Offer Template. ZEP suggests the next available number as the Short Form, but you can overwrite it as desired.

You can store Offer Templates in multiple languages.

The input is done in the Designation field: click on "German," enter the German designation for the Short Form, click on "English," enter the English designation, click on "French," enter the French designation.

Specify the currency. Category, Keywords, and Remark are optional. Save.

All data and details for a selected Offer Template can be found in the template's Object Menu.

To retrieve the data of an Offer Template (Object Menu of the Offer Template) or to execute specific actions, click on the Short Form displayed as a link in the table of Offer Templates.

All data and details for a selected Offer Template can be found here in the template's Object Menu.

Click Edit to adjust data, e.g., the Short Form, language, title, etc. You can add, edit, or delete text blocks, Offer Items, or Groupings.

You can store documents as desired under Documents for each Offer Template. You can delete an Offer Template here via the Delete menu item.

ZEP offers you the possibility to send emails at various points. For these emails, there are standardized texts included in the emails.

Here you can customize the standardized text for the Offer Mail Templates. You have the option to send specific information using general Placeholders.

You can send all Mail Templates as a test email (Preview) to your own email address. Click "Test Send (to own email address)" in the column on "German"/"English"/"French," and you will then receive the email in the corresponding language sent to your address.

Here all events or actions that can occur during the creation of Offers are displayed. For each action, you can specify which employees are authorized to trigger this action:

There are permissions for the actions:

Who is allowed to create an Offer for a customer (with the Locations & Departments module)?

Then there are permissions for the actions that lead to a status change, meaning if you want the designated Processor of an Offer to be able to view and edit this Offer in the status "new" under Offers—i.e., practically to be allowed to set the Offer to the status "in progress"—then they must be specified as an Authorized Employee for this action (pre-set).

You can authorize the following employees for the execution of the aforementioned actions:

Click the pen icon in the first column, and you can define the Authorized Employees in the following Pop-up.

The Process in 5 Steps

1. Pre-filtering by filter criteria

Offers are first pre-filtered according to the configured filter criteria:

Only offers that meet these criteria are considered further.

2. Determining possible workflow transitions

For each pre-filtered offer, the possible workflow transitions from the current status are determined.

Example:

An offer with the status “In Progress” can change to:

3. Determining permissions for each transition

For each transition, the corresponding permissions are loaded from:

Administration → Offers → Permissions

Examples:

These permissions define which user groups are allowed to perform the respective transitions (e.g. Processor, Responsible Person, Department Manager, etc.).

4. Determining the “responsible employees” (prioritization)

From all collected permissions, exactly one group is determined as the “responsible employees.”

Important:

The first group in the priority list is selected that fulfills both conditions:

Once a suitable group is found, the search stops. Lower priorities are not considered.

Priority Order

5. Final check

A user sees an offer under “My Offers” if they are a member of the determined “responsible employees” group.

Practical Example

Offer:

Possible transitions:

Permissions according to configuration:

Determining responsible employees:

Result:

You can define your own Offer Categories here.

You can store Categories in multiple languages.

The input is done in the Designation field: click on "German," enter the German designation for the Short Form, click on "English," enter the English designation, click on "French," enter the French designation. Depending on the language set for the employee or the project, the German, English, or French designation is displayed.

When you create a new Offer, you can assign one or more Categories.

You can filter accordingly based on the assigned Categories.

You can create a Keyword catalog here to classify and find your Offers.

To define a new Keyword, click the New Keyword button and enter any desired Keyword.

If you have specified under Administration > Offers > Settings that an employee may add Keywords ("Yes"), employees can also assign their own new Keywords to an Offer.

Under Invoicing - Articles, you can define a simple Article Administration.

The Articles defined here can be offered as Offer Items in your Offers. With the Invoicing module, Articles can also be billed as Invoice Items.

Use the "Create New Article" button to create an Article for all Articles that you wish to offer in your Offers or bill on your invoices.

Each Article has an Article number, a designation, and a currency. Unit, unit price, and description are optional.

If an Article is used in an invoice or in an Offer, it can no longer be deleted; set such a no-longer-needed Article to "inactive."

If you click the Copy symbol before the designation, all data of the Article are copied with the addition "Copy" in the Article number.

You find this setting under Administration -> My Company -> Letterhead.

This Letterhead forms the basis for the Offers that you create using the Document Generator in one of the formats PDF, PDF/A, Word, or ODT.

If you do not store your own Letterhead, the Standard Letterhead is always used. You can see this in the display: "Standard Letterhead German is used." The Standard Letterhead only contains a footer with your company name and the page number.

Should ZEP create your Offers ( in PDF, PDF/A, Word, or ODT) completely, including the Letterhead—for example, with your logo and additional information in the header and footer? Then you must create your own Letterhead and upload it to ZEP. If you wish to send Offers not only via email but also printed out on pre-printed company Letterheadvia post, you can store a custom Letterhead in ZEP for each of these two variants. One template might not contain background images, for example, because it is printed on pre-printed Letterhead, while the other template contains the complete Letterhead because the Offer is sent via email. Here you can store a special template for Offer Dispatch via email.

In ZEP, there are various menu items where you can create, edit, and search for Offers:

Under this menu item, you can manage, search for, and create new Offers.

Here you will find a quick overview of your Offers: upon accessing the page, the Offers created within the last 3 months up to the current day are immediately listed in the table.

The Offer list can be influenced by several filter criteria. Only the Offers that meet all set criteria are included in the list.

(Only with the Locations & Departments Module)

The "Time Period" filter is defaulted to the last 3 months up to the current day and thus restricts the Offer list to current Offers. You can adjust the time period as desired.

You only have this filter criterion if you have defined Offer Categories.

You only have this filter criterion if you have defined Keywords.

All Offers corresponding to the set filter criteria are displayed in the table. You can sort the list by several criteria. The "valid until" date is displayed in red if the date is in the past.

By clicking [Copy Symbol], you can copy an Offer; by clicking [Template Creation Symbol], you can "create a template" from the Offer.

With the Create New Offer button, you can create a new Offer.

In the General tab:

Select a customer (an Offer cannot be created without a customer). Specifying a customer Contact Person is optional. If you use the Locations & Departments module, specify the department for which this Offer is created. Specifying a project is optional. If you use the Ticketing System module, you can also select a ticket, thereby documenting a reference to this ticket.

Enter a Title.

You can specify an Order Probability in percent. Set a valid until date (the value from Administration > Offers > Settings is defaulted here) or click select to choose a Validity Period; ZEP enters the corresponding date. Specify a currency. You can select a Responsible Person, a Processor, and optionally assign Categories and Keywords.

Optionally, you can set a time period in which the Offer should be implemented. The period entered here is offered as a Placeholder in the Offer texts and Offer Item texts.

In the Format tab:

You can select the language in which the Offer should be created. The language formats commonly used in ZEP are available. Please note that you must store the corresponding Letterhead under Administration > My Company > Letterhead for the respective language.

You can optionally select the following settings:

The Letterhead of the Offer's department is usually used for the Offer. If you want to use a different Letterhead for this Offer, select the corresponding department here.

A user with Administrator rights can define different Letterhead per department in the Department Administration.

All data and details for a selected Offer can be found in the Object Menu of this Offer.

To retrieve the data of an Offer (Object Menu of the Offer) or to execute specific actions, click the Offer Number in the table of Offers.

You can store documents as desired under Documents for every Offer.

You can delete an Offer.

Here you see all data for the selected Offer. Depending on the status of the Offer, different data are displayed and different actions are possible:

Status "new":

Status "in progress":

Status "ready" (Settings: "Offers must be reviewed after completion - No") or "reviewed":

Status "ready" (Settings: "Offers must be reviewed after completion - Yes"):

Status "in review" (Settings: "Offers must be reviewed after completion - Yes"):

Status "reviewed" (Settings: "Offers must be reviewed after completion - Yes"):

Status "Document created":

"Create PDF Document for Printing":

Status "sent via Mail/Letter":

Status "accepted" (beauftragt):

Transfer to Project:

Status "invoiced" (abgerechnet):

Status "rejected" (abgelehnt):

In the subsequent pop-up window, you can make various settings for the Offer.

Offer Number

This is defaulted according to the specifications in Administration > Offers > Settings and can be changed by you. If you have made changes in this field that you wish to undo, you can reset the Offer Number suggested by ZEP using the link Next Free Number.

Customer Contact Person

Select from the customer's Contact Persons (or select: "-none-" if no specific recipient should be listed on the Offer). The Offer Recipient is listed in the Offer Address.

Offer Address

The Offer Address is defaulted here according to your Offer settings. You can also edit the Offer Address.

File Format of the Offer

Here you can select the file format in which the Offer should be created. The Default Setting corresponds to your specifications from the menu item Administration > Offers > Settings.

Selection of the specific Letterhead stored for the respective department (only selectable with the Locations & Departments module)

The Letterhead of the Offer's department is preset. If you want to use a different Letterhead for this Offer, select the associated department here.

VAT

The VAT stored for the customer is preset. However, you can freely edit the VAT at this point for this specific Offer. The VAT is shown on the Offer according to the value entered here. The VAT calculation for Offers with multiple Offer Items is performed on the rounded final amount of the Offer.

By clicking Continue, an Offer Document is generated with the specifications you have chosen.

Offer Items

Select what type the Offer Item should be:

For each Offer Item, you can enter a designation and select a VAT Rate.

For an Article Item you can select an Article from Administration > Invoicing > Articles or click "-none-" and enter the data yourself.

For an Effort Item you enter a designation and select whether the Invoicing Type is "Hour Rate" or "Daily Rate."

You can specify Planned Figures for hours or days, Receipts, km Allowance, and Subsistence Allowances (VMA)separately. ZEP calculates an amount (Calculation) from this. If you activate the checkbox Planned Hours or Days, you can click the Price Table link (next to Unit Price) and view the corresponding valid Price Table for this Offer. By clicking the desired daily or hourly rate, the value is adopted into the Unit Price field.

You can adopt this amount into the Offer as is, or you activate the checkbox "Deviating Offer Amount" and enter a different amount.

If you activate the checkbox "Only show Final Amount in Offer," the Calculation is not displayed on the Offer, but only the final amount. Optionally, you can also Select Alternative; in this case, the amount of this Offer Item is displayed in parentheses and is not included in the Offer Total. Under Description, you enter the description for this Offer Item and click "Save."

For a Lump Sum Item

You enter a designation and select whether the item should be Hour/Day-based or have an Other Unit.

Hour/Day-based

You can specify Planned Figures for hours or days, Receipts, km Allowance, and Subsistence Allowances (VMA)separately. ZEP calculates an amount (Calculation) from this. If you activate the checkbox Planned Hours or Days, you can click the Price Table link (next to Unit Price) and view the corresponding valid Price Table for this Offer. By clicking the desired daily or hourly rate, the value is adopted into the Unit Price field.

You can adopt this amount into the Offer as is, or you activate the checkbox "Deviating Offer Amount" and enter a different amount.

If you activate the checkbox "Only show Final Amount in Offer," the Calculation is not displayed on the Offer, but only the final amount. Under Description, you enter the description for this Offer Item and click "Save."

Enter the unit, quantity, and unit price.

A Surcharge Item contains a percentage that is added to the Offer Total or subtracted from it (with a negative sign, e.g., "-5%").

The value of the surcharge is calculated from the subtotal of the Offer Items that are listed on the Offer above the Surcharge Item. The value of the surcharge relates to all preceding Offer Items, regardless of their grouping. Surcharge Items exist only at the highest level, at any position.

A Grouping Item serves to group the Offer Items. The Grouping Item receives a "Number" (1); all Offer Items listed under this Grouping Item receive a sub-number (1.1, 1.2, 1.3, ...). You can move the items in their sequence using the "Up Arrow" or "Down Arrow" symbols. You can determine the level using the "Right Arrow" or "Left Arrow" symbols.

A newly created item is always appended to the end of the list. You use the "Up Arrow" symbol to move it to the desired position. You can use the "Right Arrow" or "Left Arrow" symbols to move items into an existing Grouping or move them out of that Grouping.

If you move the mouse over this symbol and hold down the left mouse button, you can move the Offer Item to any position (then release the mouse button).

In a Text Block, you can write any desired text for your Offer. You can also create an Offer entirely from Text Blockswithout Offer Items.

A Text Block containing the Offer title and the customer number as a Placeholder is pre-set. You can optionally insert various other Placeholders.

To change this Text Block, click the pen-and-paper symbol; to delete it, click the bucket symbol. If you want to add a new Text Block, you can either click the plus symbol or the "Add Text Block" button.

For each Text Block, you can specify whether a new page should begin before or after the Text Block.

Newly created Text Blocks are always displayed at the end of the list. You use the "Up Arrow" or "Down Arrow" symbols to move them to the desired position.

In the menu item Offers > My Offers, you see all Offers that you are authorized to process. This is either because you are directly entered as the "Processor" or because you have the permission to set an Offer without a Processor to a subsequent status.

You can influence the Offer list through several filter criteria. Only the Offers that meet all set criteria are included in the list.

All Offers corresponding to the set filter criteria are displayed in the table. You can sort the list by several criteria. The "valid until" date is displayed in red if the date is in the past.

By clicking the "Star" symbol, you can "create and save a template" from the Offer.