An estimate is an approximate calculation of a work order or a commercial offer. With estimates, you can inform clients about the cost of future work orders, including products and materials. However, these products will not be written off from the warehouse so you will keep accurate inventory records.

Important: If you want to use calculations, you need to enable the "Add products without inventory deduction" checkbox on the Settings > General > Work Orders page.

To create a manual estimate, follow these steps.

Step 1. Go to the Work Orders page, click the + Estimate button, and select a work order type.

Work Order type is a field that allows you to customize and use different work orders/estimate forms.

Since an estimate is a draft of a work order, you can use the same types for both estimates and work orders. If necessary, you can create separate types for estimates and customize their forms. Learn more about creating and customizing work order/estimate types in this article.

Step 2. Fill in all the necessary information about the client, asset, etc.

Filling in the information in the estimate is the same as when you create a work order because the estimate is then converted into a work order. The only difference is that you cannot create payments by estimate.

Please note that this section may be called differently (Vehicle, Device, Appliance, Tool, Equipment, Shoes, Garment), or you may not have it depending on the business activity type chosen while signing up.

This Asset section contains device, equipment, car, or other client property information. The Asset is linked to the client, and you can see the entire work order history from a specific device.

By default, there is already a list of certain system fields from the assets form, but you can customize this form and its display in the work order. See this article for details.

To create a new client asset, fill in the mandatory field Serial number / IMEI / VIN and click the "+" button to open the new asset creation window. Alternatively, continue filling in the fields; the asset will be created automatically after the estimate is created.

Please note that you can generate a unique serial number if the asset does not have a serial number or cannot be determined. To do this, click the Generate button.

The asset serial number template can be customized. See this article for details.

For the Group-Brand-Model-Modification component field, a multi-level assets directory is linked.

That is, you can set up a sequential directory. For example, when you select the Smartphones group, the next Brand level will display only those products that correspond to smartphones (i.e., the highest level). Next, we select the Apple brand and see that only Apple smartphone models are displayed in the next level of the Model.

Note: if such an asset is already linked to a client, the client's data will be automatically pulled into the estimate.

You can do the opposite. First, specify the client, and if such a client already has assets, you can select the one you need in the Serial number / IMEI / VIN field.

Please note that this procedure may result in a Duplicate Serial Numbers error. For example, the asset's owner has changed, or the asset belongs to one client and is brought by another. Read more about how to avoid errors in this article.

Specify the car's VIN in the assets VIN system field, and RemOnline will automatically fill in the Group, Brand, Model, Modification, and Year fields.

You can create more fields for auto-filling on the Settings > Integrations page. Learn more about how to use and configure the VIN Lookup integration in this article.

Note: integration with VIN Lookup is available starting from the Startup plan.

Enter the IMEI of your phone or tablet in the "Serial number / IMEI" asset system field, and RemOnline will automatically fill in the "Group," "Brand," and "Model" fields.

For the auto-completion to work, you must have the IMEI Lookup integration enabled on the Settings > Integrations page.

Note: integration with IMEI Lookup is available starting from the Startup plan.

Client name is a mandatory field where you must specify the client.

If the client is new, RemOnline will offer to add them to your database immediately. To do this, click the “+ Client" or "+" button and fill in the client's information, after which the profile data will be automatically pulled into the work order.

You can also fill in the information directly in the estimate, and the client will be automatically added to your database.

If a client has already contacted you and is in your client database, select them from the list, and their information will be automatically pulled into the estimate.

Note: to ensure that this field is used for auto-selecting clients from the database and employees do not create duplicates, you must enable the "Can see clients" permission in the employee role settings.

Phone is a field for filling in the client's phone number.

If you have a lead from a client with the same phone number, RemOnline will display a message offering to link them. After creating an estimate, the linked lead will automatically switch to the "Won" status. You can choose which status to transfer the lead to if you have created several lead statuses with the "Create work order" action.

Note: You can only link an estimate to a lead when creating an estimate.

In the "Payer" field, you can select the estimate/work order payer.

If you leave this field blank, the client you specified above will remain the payer.

If you choose another person as a payer, the amount of the future work order will be considered in the payer's balance. The work order amount for the client will equal 0 (zero). This will be displayed in the Work Order status widget.

Note: You can add the "Payer" system field to the estimate/work order form separately for each type on the page Settings > Forms editor > Work Orders. This feature is available starting from the Startup plan.

Ad campaign - this field specifies the advertising campaign for this estimate.

You can set up advertising campaigns on the Settings > Marketing page. Learn more about how advertising campaigns work here.

Manager Notes - the employee can indicate Note information about the estimate in this system field.

Estimated price - in this system field, you can specify the job's estimated cost for further display in printed documents.

Urgent is a system checkbox. When this checkbox is selected, the estimate is included in the Urgent badge, and the corresponding indicator appears in the table.

Due date is a system field. This is the date the estimate should be set to the "Accepted" status.

Manager - a system field for assigning a responsible manager in the estimate. The employee specified in this field can be displayed in printed documents.

Assigned technician - a system field for assigning a responsible technician in the estimate. The employee specified in this field can be displayed in printed documents.

Step 3. Set up automatic printing of documents when creating an estimate.

To do this, click the printer button in the lower right corner and select the document you want to print. The document template will automatically pull up the data you filled in using variables. For more information on the meaning of variables in the document templates for estimates and work orders, follow the link.

Step 4. When you create an estimate, you can add products and services immediately on the Services and Products tab. If you need to add services and parts later, you can do so after creating an estimate. Read more about how to add services and products to an estimate or work order in this article.

Please note that none of the products you add to an estimate are written off from the warehouse. You can write off the products after you convert the estimate to a work order.

Also, when creating an estimate, you can immediately create a task and add a photo, file, or comment to the event feed. Learn more about the estimate/work order event feed in this article.

Please note that the event feed for the estimate and the work order is end-to-end. That is, all events that were made during the estimate will be transferred to the work order event feed.

Step 5. Click the "Create" button to close the created estimate and display it in the table. Click the "Create and open" button to continue working on the created estimate.

Please note that clicking the "Closed" button in the upper right corner will close the estimate and not save it!

If you need to create multiple estimates for a client, you can click the "Create and accept more" button. After that, the current estimate will be created, and a window will open to create a new estimate with the client's information already filled in.

Done! The estimate is created and displayed in the general table. More information on how to work with estimates can be found in this section of the Help Center.