How to Integrate Proposal Kit and QuoteWerks - (2024)

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In this video we're going to show how the QuoteWerks and Proposal Pack Wizard integration features work. We're going to show a couple different workflows. One creating a layout file in Proposal Pack Wizard and then using that layout file within QuoteWerks.

The second workflow will show outputting a quote as a single page within QuoteWerks and then using that to import into our Wizard during the assembly of a document. And we're going to illustrate a couple different businesses and different design themes but using the same Wizard software and the same QuoteWerks software so you can see how multiple businesses can use the same setup. So we have our QuoteWerks software running in the background.

We have our line items and this has been set up assuming it's a network cabling company offering some services and hardware. Now our Proposal Pack Wizard can communicate with your running instance of QuoteWerks. So we're running our Proposal Pack Wizard.

We've selected our Network #4 design theme. Now to get the Wizard to generate QuoteWerks compatible layout files we have to set up the Preferences. So we're going to go into the Preferences button, the QuoteWerks tab.

There are a lot of different settings but you can turn on everything that needs to be turned on by clicking this one button. Now that has turned on the correct checkboxes in multiple places within the Preferences so not only on this screen but also over in the remap mail–merge. It's turned on the mail merge remapping and picked the QuoteWerks mapping.

Now you also have the ability if you want to change our tag mappings. These are the Proposal Kit tags which in the actual templates will have the double brackets on each side which will be replaced with QuoteWerks versions of tags. So you have the option to change those mappings and there are additional spots left for your own custom tags.

You do not have to go into this screen after turning on the QuoteWerks remapping feature. Now that is the only thing that needs to be changed in the Wizards preferences to enable us to create QuoteWerks compatible layouts. Now we've set up a project in our Wizard.

So you'll notice some check boxes are grayed out because they are not applicable when we're creating a QuoteWerks layout file. We've selected a number of chapters. Now the Estimate chapter is what's going to hold the final quote in QuoteWerks.

So this remapping process in addition to changing our Proposal Kit tags to QuoteWerks tags it will insert a compatible layout file into whatever cost page you've added to your project. You know, could be the Cost Summary page, the Estimate page, the Invoice, the Work Order and so on. There's a number of different chapters that our Wizard will automatically update to be QuoteWerks compatible.

And once we save our project and generate the documents it'll tell us that we've got the remapping features turned on. Now we just kick back and wait for the Wizard to generate the document. The Wizard also will make additional changes to the formatting of the document it's generating.

QuoteWerks will have its own proprietary processes for, you know, processing Word documents. So it can change the layouts of shape objects, it might move things around so the final layout can be different than what you expect. So our Wizard can take that into account when we know what changes QuoteWerks will be making so that you don't see any differences in the final document usually.

Okay, now our layout file is created and during this generation process the Wizard actually communicated with the running instance of your QuoteWerks software. You'll see on this quote our Item Types. QuoteWerks Item Types are a way for you to group your line items and have individual subtotals and tables for the different groups.

So in this case we've set it up with line items for Services and Hardware. And you'll see the line items here. So now that the document is generated you can see our Proposal Kit tags have been replaced with QuoteWerks tags.

QuoteWerks tags here. Now the Estimate page is in use here and you could use different chapters with different titles. You know, you could use the Cost Summary, the Services Cost Summary, the Invoice, the Quote page, the Estimate page, the Work Order page if you want different titles.

So the line Item Types here Services and Hardware were pulled out of the QuoteWerks database while it created this custom table layout. And you'll see we're using QuoteWerks Item Types. Services Item Types.

Hardware and you can customize these layout files that our Wizard builds if you want to have different columns or if you want to add in your photograph tag and so on. You know, if you want to add additional lines here for other things such as shipping charges. So this is all a standard QuoteWerks layout right now.

So other than that we can just make custom edits to the rest of the text, whatever we want, as a Word document before we copy this into QuoteWerks. It can also be edited after you copy it over. So at this point it is just a Word document that's been put into QuoteWerks compatible format.

Another thing our Wizard can do is it's not just the proposal and the quote that can be put into QuotesWerks format. You see we added a legal contract, the Computer Hardware and Networking Contract. And you can see that it was customized with QuoteWerks compatible tags as well.

Our Wizard has the ability to add additional documents into your project beyond just the proposal and contract and so on. We can add an invoice page. We can follow–up letters.

We can add additional contract pages. So say we want to add a separate invoice page and we will also add a follow–up letter. Now we can see that these additional pages, our follow–up status letter, has been converted to QuoteWerks compatible format.

Our invoice which also has a matching visual design theme to the proposal has been converted to QuoteWerks compatible format. The same Services and Hardware Item Types have been pulled from the QuoteWerks running instance and a compatible table has been created. So now we can copy all of these files over to our QuoteWerks system.

And because we ran our Wizard with the running instance of QuoteWerks it automatically selected our QuoteWerks layout folder. You can change this to anything you want. So we're going to save these files over into QuoteWerks.

So at this point the work in our Wizard is done for these layout files. We don't need to use the Wizard anymore. Over in QuoteWerks, their normal delivery process to output to PDF or go straight to email is not recommended for use with our Proposal Kit layouts.

QuoteWerks has its own proprietary PDF converter and it does not convert a lot of our design theme elements correctly. So if you tried this option you might see things like bullet points missing. You'll see shape objects out of place.

You'll see shape objects covering elements that it should be behind and so on. So what we'll do instead is we'll use QuoteWerks Links tab so we can send our output straight to Word documents, not straight to PDFs. And to do that we click this blue button and over in the folder that we saved the files to you'll see the four files we just copied.

And we're going to add these as links. So we've added our four templates as links and now all we have to do to actually merge the data that you see here. And this is all within QuoteWerks this has nothing to do with Proposal Kit, nothing to do with Proposal Pack Wizard anymore.

We can just highlight and say Save New Copy and Merge Word Document. Now QuoteWerks has merged its data and line items into this new layout file and you'll see the title, names and addresses, dates have all been replaced by QuoteWerks into this layout file. The Estimate page has now been replaced with the actual data from the line items.

All the totals and everything is done. The data has been merged into all the other tags all throughout the document. And now this file is ready to be delivered after maybe some minor editing and completing.

If you want to Save As Acrobat file now you can just use Adobe Acrobat or go to File Save As and save as a PDF. We can also merge any of the other documents. Let's say merge our QuoteWerks data into the follow–up status letter.

Do the same thing, we'll just merge it, view it. Let's merge the data in and it's ready to have final editing done and send out to the customer. So you can do this with all the other files as well.

The contract, the invoice. Now we will show a second proposal created for a different kind of company. Say a catering company with a different database in QuoteWerks.

A different design theme in Proposal Pack Wizard but using all the same software. Okay, now we're going to change our design theme to our Catering #1 design theme. And note you don't get every single one of these design themes.

Only the individual design theme or themes you've purchased will be available in this list. So each company usually purchases a single design theme sometimes two that match the kind of business they're in. Or they create their own custom design theme instead of using our pre–made designs.

So if you are using our Proposal Kit Professional you can actually create your own custom design theme like the ones we're showing here but have it using your own graphics, your own logo, your own color scheme. Okay, so now we have the Catering #1 design theme we are loading up a set of chapters and content for a catering proposal. And in our QuoteWerks database we have a catering database.

You can see our line Item Types are different. Before we used Hardware and Services. Now we've got Item Types that reflect a catering company.

Before our Wizard created two tables. Now the Wizard is going to create many more tables to cover this more complex quote. So for this proposal we're using a different set of chapters.

Before we had chapters reflecting an IT company. This time we're using some chapters that reflect a catering company. And when we generate our document, just like before, it's going to let us know that we have QuoteWerks remapping on.

And we just wait for it to generate the document. Now the Wizard is going to again communicate with the running instance of QuoteWerks and now it will find a different database, different sets of line items, different item types and it will build a compatible table layout. Okay now the Wizard has generated this layout file.

We can open and edit as needed. See QuoteWerks tags have been integrated in. Now we have a different design theme, different set of chapters.

Before we used the Estimate page. Now we're using the Quote page just so you can see how different chapter headers can be used. Now you see the Wizard has pulled in the Item Types from this new quote.

Appetizers, Salads, Main Courses, Desserts, Open Bar, Event Services. And now we save this file as a QuoteWerks layout file. Now the work of the Wizard is done and we can go over to QuoteWerks just like before.

And in the Links tab we click the blue button. Select the file we just copied and link to it. Right click, click Save New Copy and Merge and now QuoteWerks has merged its data into the layout file.

And now you can see all the tables are filled in with the actual quote. And with the final editing then you can save as a PDF print (or email or upload) and deliver. Now the third workflow we're going to show is going the reverse.

We're going to create a quote page in QuoteWerks and then have our Wizard pull in that quote page during the assembly of a proposal. So for that we're going to turn off the QuoteWerks remapping and we need to create a QuoteWerks compatible layout that we can use that we're going to pull back into Proposal Kit later. So you can use some of these stock layouts we've already created.

So we're going to use the Services Cost Summary in this example. And we know there can be multiple item types you can see these are the stock pages that we've created that are QuoteWerks compatible but they're also Proposal Kit compatible. They have all of the Proposal Kit word styles applied.

These gray and black shades in the cells are actually replaced with the color scheme of the design theme you're using while the Wizard assembles a document. So you can keep these gray shades if you want and let the Wizard apply the styling. So in this case we need to do a little bit of customizing.

So in our QuoteWerks layout file we've slightly customized a version of this stock layout. We've put in a chapter title and we've copied and pasted this header graphic from the Proposal Pack Services Cost Summary template and we've hand edited in the Item Types. So we're going to illustrate the networking proposal a second time going the reverse direction.

So we know our Item Types, our Services and Hardware and we know we're only going to use two tables so this is our final layout just for a cost page and it's in our QuoteWerks layouts quote folder. Now in this case our Wizard isn't going to be communicating with the running instance of QuoteWerks so you don't have to have both running at the same time. So we've loaded up our same networking quote and we're going to link to that page, that single quote page.

Same thing, right click, save and merge same as before. Now you can see QuoteWerks has applied the actual data to this page. The page is kept simple.

We don't have background headers and footers. We don't have any extra styling. This is just the raw output of the quote in a Word document.

So we're going to save this now over to our QuoteWerks outbox folder. It just happens to be the default folder that we've got set up for pulling in QuoteWerks created quote files. We'll save that.

So now all the work in QuoteWerks is complete. We can actually shut down QuoteWerks, so don't need it anymore. Okay so now everything we're going to do is in the Wizard.

We've got our Networks #4 design theme selected again. We've got our networking project. Now because we're not using QuoteWerks remapping you have all the features available.

But because we're going to be pulling in a quote from QuoteWerks we have turned off the dynamic Excel spreadsheet linking because we're not using the spreadsheets for the calculations in Proposal Kit. We're using the QuoteWerks file that we're pulling in. So this is the only difference we've unchecked.

Now we're using Proposal Kit to do the data merging so in our Company Data and Client Data screens we have the data that is going to be merged into the document whereas before this data was held in QuoteWerks instead and QuoteWerks was doing the data merging. We have the same or similar set of chapters selected. Before we used the Estimate page.

The only difference is here we've selected the Services Cost Summary. It all looks the same. The only difference is that the chapter header is different.

So now when you save the project the Wizard will build the proposal but it will also pull in that external file. It will swap out the stock Proposal Kit Services Cost Summary page with the version created out of QuoteWerks. Okay, so now the Wizard is ready to import the file.

We can just browse to it. It's going to automatically open in the Outbox folder. So we'll select that file and now the Wizard will continue assembling the document.

Ok, now the Wizard is finished assembling everything. Now you can see the final output looks almost identical to if you did it the workflow the other way. It's just a matter of what kind of workflow works best for you.

So you can see the page has been pulled in from QuoteWerks and the Wizard has applied the background design and it has applied the color scheme and it has applied the typography changes giving you a consistent looking document across every page. The rest of the proposal can be finished off and then delivered. So we'll show a couple of quick things in the Preferences just to finish things off.

This whole process can be done also without QuoteWerks even being installed on the computer for either workflow. So before, the first workflows we showed the Wizard was communicating with QuoteWerks and pulling in the Item Types. You can set up the Item Types yourself in this screen and define how you want the final tables to be created.

So that way we could have entered the Services and the Hardware or all the catering Item Types right here and you wouldn't need the Wizard to communicate with QuoteWerks. If QuoteWerks was also installed you can also load the screen with the Item Types. That gives you the option of making custom changes to the text versions that will get put in the document.

There's a lot of different ways to configure this. This Edit Template screen this will take you to a screen where you can edit our QuoteWerks layout files for all the different chapters that we have that can have QuoteWerks compatible layouts swapped out with them automatically. So for only using a single table for all item types lumping every line item into the same table we have a simple layout for that.

Or if you want the one table with a subtotal per Item Type we have a template for that which you can customize. So say if you wanted to drop out the unit prices you just remove this column from all the tables. If you want to add additional tags like the tag for pictures if you see that in some of QuoteWerks examples you can customize that right here.

So you can completely customize these as you need. And that is how you use QuoteWerks and Proposal Kit together in multiple workflows using the same software but different data and different design themes that can be used for any business that needs a line item database with a detailed Word document in a visual design theme.