Under Administration > Offer management, you find all master data and templates around proposal creation: text modules for recurring content, categories and keywords for structuring, mail templates for sending, and the configuration of workflow permissions.
Articles
Articles are reusable service and product building blocks with a standard label, unit, and unit price. They can be selected in every article of a proposal, which automatically pre-sets the label, unit, unit price, and VAT.
Article master data is maintained centrally in the Invoicing module under Administration > Invoicing > Articles. The full documentation is in the article Master Data – Invoicing in the „Articles" section.
Note: Without the Invoicing module active, the articles area appears instead under Administration > Offer management > Articles. Functionality and operation are identical — only the path differs.
Text Modules
Under Administration > Offer management > Text Modules, you store reusable text modules for offer items, e.g., standard service descriptions or disclaimers. Per text block, you store short form, label, and the actual text as a WYSIWYG block. In the offer items, you select the text block via a dropdown.
The order of text modules in the list can be adjusted via arrow icons.
Categories and keywords
Via Categories, you classify proposals by business field or product type (e.g., consulting, training, maintenance). Keywords are freely assignable tags that additionally structure and filter proposals. Categories and keywords are available as filter criteria in the proposal overview.
Mail Templates
Under Administration > Offer management > Mail Templates, you store the standard emails around proposals — per language (German, English, French). Each email template contains subject and HTML body with placeholders such as %NUMMER%, %TITEL%, %KUNDE%, %PROJEKT%, %GUELTIG_BIS%, or %BEMERKUNG_INTERN%.
ZEP ships six standard mail templates for proposals, which you can adapt to your tone of voice:
Send proposal – used when sending a proposal to the customer by email.
Send order confirmation – only visible when the setting „Order confirmation after commissioning" is active; sent on the transition Commissioned → Confirmed.
Processor assigned – notifies the person set as the new processor of a proposal.
Processor removed – notifies the person removed as processor of a proposal.
Processor cleared – notifies involved persons when a proposal no longer has a processor.
Reminder to follow up – used by the scheduler task Reminder to follow up on the proposal (see article Basic Settings).
With the Test send button, you send a preview to your own address to check layout and placeholder resolution.
Workflow permissions
Under Administration > Offer management > Permissions, you specify per workflow action which roles may trigger it. For each action, you select any number of roles from the following eight groups:
Administrators — always authorized (cannot be deactivated)
Controllers
Project controllers
Department managers of the proposal department (only with the Locations and Departments module; always authorized)
Key account manager of the assigned customer
Project manager with budget responsibility of the assigned project
Responsible for the proposal
Processor of the proposal (except for the action Create proposal, since at creation no processor exists yet)
Additionally, individual further employees can be authorized by name per action — useful for exceptions that do not match a standard role.
Configurable actions include:
Create proposal — sets the initial status New
Delete proposal
Create, change, or delete a proposal template
Every individual status transition (In Progress, Complete, In Review, Reviewed, Document Created, Sent by Email/Post, Commissioned, Confirmed, Transferred to Project, Billed, Rejected)
Revise — reactivation of a completed proposal
This enables precise enforcement of a multi-eyes principle — for example: Checked only by controllers, Commissioned only by sales leadership, Billed only by accounting.
The following default assignment applies after module activation (each row can be adjusted individually):
Action | Authorized by default (customizable) |
Create proposal | Administrators, department managers, key account manager, project manager with budget responsibility |
Delete proposal | + Responsible for the proposal |
Create / change / delete template | administrators only |
Transition → In Progress | all 8 role groups |
Transition → Complete / In Review / Reviewed | all 8 role groups |
Transition → Document Created | all 8 role groups |
Transition → Sent by Email / Post | all 8 role groups |
Transition → Commissioned / Confirmed | all 8 role groups |
Transition → Transferred to Project | all roles except Processor |
Transition → Billed | all 8 role groups |
Transition → Rejected | all roles except Processor |
Letter paper for proposals
Note: Letter paper is stored centrally under Administration > Basic Settings > My Company > Letter papers, across modules. The placeholders available for proposals and the upload workflow are described in the article Create and upload letter papers.
Per department, two separate letter paper templates for proposals can be created: a letter template for postal sending (typically with an address field per DIN 5008 and folding marks) and a mail template without an address block, sent as a PDF attachment of an email. This way, proposals appear in the corporate design of the department — and the appropriate layout is selected automatically based on the sending channel.
