How to Build Your First Quote in Senitix CRM

Your first Senitix CRM quote needs one product in the catalog and a price book with a price on it. From there: add the quote to the deal, add line items from the price book, add any discount as its own line, save that as version 1, and generate the PDF from a quote template.

This is the setup walkthrough, not the pricing decision. For what a complete quote should say (quote number, valid-until date, payment and delivery terms), see our sales quote checklist; for structuring more than one price list, see price books. The catalog and price book come first, so they can be ready before a deal ever needs a quote.

What do you need before your first Senitix CRM quote?

Check these five things before you open a deal. Most of the trouble first-time quote builders run into traces back to one of them being missing, not to the quote step itself.

• At least one product in the catalog, with a name and, if you use them, a SKU or code. A quote line always starts from a catalog product, never a blank line typed from memory.
• A price book with a price set for that product. Every plan includes a product catalog and price books.
• An open deal to attach the quote to. A quote is a record on a deal, not a standalone document, so the deal has to exist first.
• A quote template for the PDF, set up by whoever administers your workspace. If nobody has created one yet, that is the one prerequisite outside a rep’s own control.
• A plan that includes quoting. Plan details are on the pricing page.

How do you build your first quote, step by step?

Seven steps, each with a clear output, take you from an empty catalog to a sent PDF.

1. Add the product to the catalog. Owner: whoever manages your catalog, often sales operations. Output: a product record with a name and unit that a quote line can reference.
2. Set its price in a price book. Owner: the same person, or finance if prices are centrally controlled. Output: a priced catalog line, ready for a rep to quote from without guessing a number.
3. Open the deal and start a new quote. Owner: the deal owner. Output: a draft quote record attached to that deal.
4. Add line items from the price book. Owner: the deal owner. Output: quote lines with quantity and unit price already filled in from the catalog, not retyped.
5. Add a discount as its own line, if one applies. Owner: the deal owner, or an approver once the discount crosses your team’s threshold. Output: the list price and the discount both visible, so nobody has to reverse-engineer the arithmetic later.
6. Save it: that is version 1. Owner: the deal owner. Output: a numbered quote version kept on the deal, not a file on someone’s desktop.
7. Generate the PDF from a quote template and send it. Owner: the deal owner. Output: the document the buyer actually reads, and a quote status that moves from draft to sent.

How do you add a discount without hiding the list price?

Put the discount on its own line rather than lowering the unit price directly. A line that reads “list price $4,200, volume discount −$420” tells the buyer, the approver and next year’s renewal exactly what happened. A line that just says “$3,780” tells nobody anything: not what the list price was, not why the number is lower, not whether the discount should still apply next time.

This matters most at renewal. A rep working from a quote with a visible discount line can see, a year later, that the account got 10% off for an early commitment and decide whether that reason still holds. A rep working from a single collapsed number has no way to tell an earned discount from a rep who simply priced the deal to close it faster.

How do you save a second version instead of overwriting the first?

When the buyer asks for a change (a different quantity, one more line item, a bigger discount), create a new quote version rather than editing version 1. The rule is the same one that governs any quote: a revision is a new numbered version on the deal, never an overwrite of the one the customer already holds.

Kept this way, three things follow. The current version is unambiguous: it is the highest number, and the record shows who created it and when. Nothing is lost: a superseded version is still evidence of what was offered before the change. And a status question months later (“what did we actually quote them?”) becomes a lookup on the deal instead of a search through old emails or a shared drive.

How do you generate the quote as a PDF?

Once a quote has its line items, choose a quote template and generate the PDF from it. The template is what turns the record into the document a buyer opens (your layout, your terms, your branding), and it is set up once by an admin rather than assembled by hand on every deal. A sent quote’s status updates automatically when it passes its valid-until date without an answer, so an expired quote is visible on the deal rather than silently forgotten.

Example: a first quote and its second version

Example, with illustrative numbers: a first-time Senitix user quoting industrial shelving adds one product (a heavy-duty steel shelving unit), prices it in a single price book, and opens a quote on a deal for a 40-unit warehouse order.

The buyer came back asking for ten more units and a volume discount once the order grew. Rather than edit version 1’s total in place, the rep built version 2 with the new quantity and the discount as its own line. Version 1 still exists on the deal, showing the original 40-unit price the buyer first saw. That is useful if anyone later asks why the per-unit price looks the same across both versions.

What happens after you send the quote?

A sent quote’s status moves to accepted once the buyer agrees, or to expired if its valid-until date passes with no answer. Two boundaries are worth knowing going in. First, on a workspace that has one set up, a discounted quote can go through an approval process with named approvers before it ever reaches the buyer; see our discount approval process guide for how to set the thresholds. Second, acceptance itself is recorded by the rep, from a signed copy or a purchase order citing the quote number and version; Senitix does not collect an online signature, so that step happens outside the CRM and gets attached back to the deal.

What mistakes catch first-time quote builders?

• Typing a line item instead of pulling it from the price book. A hand-typed line has no link back to the catalog, so it will not reflect a future price change and it breaks the “which price book did this come from” question at renewal.
• Editing an existing version after the buyer has it. Once a version is out, a change belongs in a new version, not an edit to the old one.
• Folding the discount into the unit price. It closes today’s deal and erases the record an approver or a future rep needed.
• Skipping the quote template and sending a screenshot. The template exists so every quote a buyer receives looks like it came from the same company, not from whichever rep built it.

See what a quote record holds, alongside contracts and products, in the quotes section of the feature catalog, or compare plans and start on Free to set up your first product and price book today.

Frequently asked questions

Can I build a quote without a price book?

No. A quote line is built from a catalog product priced in a price book, so both have to exist first. If you only sell one thing at one price, that is still a price book, just a short one with a single line.

What is the difference between a draft quote and version 1?

They are the same record at different points. A quote starts as a draft while you are still adding lines; saving it, whether or not you have sent it, is what gives it version 1. A later revision becomes version 2, and so on, each one kept rather than overwritten.

Do I need approval before sending a discounted quote?

Only if your workspace has an approval process set up. Without one, a discount is still added as a line on the quote, just with no built-in approval step, so it is worth agreeing your own threshold and sign-off habit as a team even before you set one up.

Can I edit the PDF after I generate it?

Edit the quote record, then regenerate the PDF from the template, rather than editing the PDF file itself. A PDF edited by hand no longer matches the record on the deal, which is exactly the mismatch a numbered quote version is meant to prevent.