Under Administration > Offer management > Settings, you configure the Proposals module company-wide. The settings affect all newly created proposals — individual values such as format, letter paper, or texts can be overridden per proposal.

The default validity defines how many days a new proposal is valid from the creation date. The value is used as the pre-set for the Valid until field in every new proposal and can be adjusted there manually.

Typical values are 14, 30, or 60 days — depending on how quickly your customers need to confirm proposals. Tip: keep the value rather tight; this increases the pressure for a timely response and prevents prices from circulating in unbinding form for long periods.

In the Number range section, you define how proposal numbers are issued automatically. The format consists of a prefix, a consecutive counter, and an optional suffix. The following placeholders are available within the format:

Example: AN-%YYYY%- + 4-digit counter produces numbers like AN-2026-0001.

Version number in the proposal number: Activate this option if you want to create multiple versions of a proposal and include the version in the proposal number (e.g., AN-2026-0001 v2). Without this option, a new version is issued under a new proposal number.

When enabled, the initials of the employee who created the proposal are printed directly after the proposal date — for example, 27/05/2026 / MM. This way, the recipient immediately knows whom to contact for questions, without having to search the contact line.

Useful if several people create proposals for the same customer or if internal authorship should remain traceable. The initials come from the employee profile.

Here you set the default file format for the final proposal file — typically PDF or PDF/A (long-term archive-capable). You also configure the preview format shown in the browser when creating a draft (without PDF/A, since the preview need not be archive-capable).

PDF/A is mandatory if you retain proposals as tax-relevant records for the long term or send them by email in a legally secure way. For pure sales proposals without retention requirements, the standard PDF is sufficient.

In the Email sending section, you configure the sender that appears when sending a proposal by email. This setting applies only to proposal emails; for other ZEP system emails (reminders, notifications), the central sender address under Administration > My Company > Email applies. Four fields are available:

The following five checkboxes control which roles may see and edit proposals. By default, all permissions are set restrictively — activate them selectively, depending on your sales organization.

Activate this option if the sales team should also see proposals from other colleagues — for example, for vacation cover or as a template for similar requests. Without this option, employees only see proposals where they are involved as responsible person, processor, key account manager, or project manager with budget responsibility.

If the option above is disabled, you can additionally allow project managers without budget responsibility to see proposals for their projects. Useful when technical project managers should stay informed about ongoing proposals, even if the budget is centrally managed.

With the Ticket system module, you can additionally set here whether ticket processors may also see the related proposals — for example, to answer customer questions directly without involving the sales department.

By default, only administrators may maintain keywords in the master data catalog. With this option, employees may spontaneously add new keywords while creating or editing a proposal, which are then automatically added to the catalog. Useful when keyword maintenance should happen in a decentralized way.

By default, only the key account manager, the department manager, and the administrator may create proposals for a customer. With this option, employees with certain additional rights (e.g., „Sales") may also create proposals for any customer — even if they are not set as the key account manager.

For effort and fixed price items, quantities can be recorded in either hours or days. When transferring a proposal into a project, ZEP automatically converts the planned days into planned hours using this factor. The default value is 8 (1 day = 8 hours); enter a different value if your target working time differs (e.g., 7.5-hour days).

The factor applies company-wide. With strongly different working-time models, it is recommended to record expenditure items directly in hours to avoid rounding differences.

Activate this option to enforce a four-eyes principle in the proposal workflow. The status Done then cannot lead directly to sending; the proposal first moves to status In review and must be set to Checked by an authorized person before the document can be created and sent.

Which roles may trigger the transition In Review → Reviewed is defined in the workflow permissions (see article Master Data – Proposals).

Activate this option if an order confirmation should be sent after receiving the order from the customer. The status Commissioned can then be supplemented by the transition Confirmed, which triggers an order-confirmation email. The corresponding mail template is stored in the master data.

With the Proposals module active, the scheduler offers the task Reminder to follow up on the proposal. You find the task management under Administration > System > Tasks. Activate the task and set the timing relative to the validity date — for example, „7 days before expiry" or „3 days after expiry". The proposal's responsible person then automatically receives an email reminder to follow up.