The Proposals module covers the entire offer process in ZEP: create and review offers, send by email or letter, status workflow with handovers to project and invoicing. Offers are directly linked to ZEP master data (customers, projects, articles) so that calculated efforts can later be transferred automatically into project planned hours or invoice items.
Product line availability
Note: Proposals is included in ZEP Operations and ZEP Business.
Access permissions
What users may do with offers is controlled by these rows in the Offers area of Roles & Permissions:
Offer Data: view or edit all offers
Offer Templates: view or edit offer templates
Create Offers and Delete Offers: use the respective function
Who may trigger the individual status transitions is defined under Administration > Offers > Access permissions (see Master Data – Proposals).
Additional menu items
The area makes the following new areas and tabs available in ZEP:
Offers
The main menu shows the entry Offers with the sub-items My Offers (offers for which you are responsible for the next step), All Offers (for users with the Offer Data permission in Roles & Permissions), and Templates for reusable sample offers.
Customer and project detail page
On the detail page of a customer and a project, the Offers tab appears. This lets you see at a glance which offers were created for a specific customer or project without filtering the global list.
Administration > Offers
Under Administration > Offers, a dedicated tile appears with the sub-items Settings, Text Modules, Mail Templates, Access permissions for the workflow, Categories, and Keywords. Without the Invoicing module active, the items Article and Units additionally appear here. With Invoicing, you maintain articles there.
Administration > System > Tasks
With the Proposals module active, the area Administration > System > Tasks shows the additional task Reminder to follow up on the offer. It triggers a scheduled email to the responsible person when an offer is about to expire or has just expired. Configuration is covered in the article Basic Settings – Proposals.
Dashboard Widgets
The area adds two new widgets to My Dashboard:
My Offers (group My data): Personal overview of all offers you are responsible for or processing.
All Offers (group Team and organization): Company-wide overview. Visible to users with the Offer Data permission in Roles & Permissions.
Distinction from Project Planning and Invoicing
Note: When an offer is transferred to a project, ZEP converts the planned days of the offer into planned hours of the new project (Project Planning). If Generate invoice items is active in the transfer dialog, invoice items are created in the new project from the offer items (Invoicing).