Creating, Sending, and Managing Sales Quotes in Zoho One

In this guide, we'll discuss how to create, send, and manage quotes in Zoho One using Zoho CRM and the Finance integration. Zoho CRM can act as the central place where your sales team creates and sends out quotes, regardless of whether those quotes are created by Zoho CRM, Zoho's finance applications like Invoice or Books, or a third-party solution.

While Zoho CRM includes a native Quotes module, most businesses in Zoho One benefit from connecting Zoho CRM with Zoho Books and Zoho Inventory. This integration allows your business to generate, send, and track professional quotes through the CRM while keeping your product, pricing, and customer info synced across all systems.

Areas Covered

• Choosing the Right Quote-Building Approach

• Why Integrate Your Sales and Finance Systems

• Native Finance Modules in CRM

• Products in Zoho CRM

• Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ) in CRM

• Setting up the Finance Integration

• Using Third-Party Integrations

• Creating and Sending Quotes

• Tracking and Managing Sent Quotes

• Client Portal in Zoho Books
   

Choosing the Right Quote-Building Approach

Zoho CRM offers multiple ways to create and send quotes. The best option depends on your business and how you handle your sales and accounting. Below, you'll find three hypothetical situations that'll help you determine which method you should use to create quotes in the CRM.

Option 1: Keeping everything in Zoho CRM

Let's say you're a business owner who wants to create and send quotes directly from Zoho CRM without connecting to a separate Zoho or third-party application. In this case, using the native Quotes module or CPQ within Zoho CRM is the best fit. This works best for businesses with a simple sales process, or ones that are happy with the billing process they already have.

Option 2: Integrating Zoho CRM with other Zoho tools

Let's say you're a business owner who wants to manage your sales process in Zoho CRM while also connecting your quotes to Zoho's accounting, invoicing, and inventory software. In this case, you'd enable the Zoho Finance integration to connect Zoho CRM with Zoho Books, Invoice, and Inventory. Quotes are still created and sent from CRM, but are then synced with Books and Inventory, and can be converted into invoices and sales orders without re-entering any data.

Option 3: Integrating Zoho CRM with third-party tools

Let's say you're a business owner who runs their quoting and billing on a third-party system but wants their sales activity and financial information to also show up in Zoho CRM. In this scenario, a third-party or custom integration would be used to allow Zoho CRM to remain your system of record for sales while data is synced from external tools.

Why Integrate Your Sales and Finance Systems

Integrating your sales and finance systems allows your team to move from quoting to billing without re-entering data or switching tools. When the Zoho Finance integration is set up in Zoho CRM, information gets shared between CRM, Books, and Inventory. That means quotes created in CRM use accurate pricing, product, and stock data. Integrating these systems not only saves time but ensures consistency across departments.

Zoho Books manages the accounting data that comes from each accepted quote, including taxes, payment terms, and eventual conversion into invoices. Every quote created in Zoho CRM connects directly with Zoho Books, allowing your finance team to be fully appraised of all the quotes that are being sent by sales, all while solely working out of Books. Meanwhile, your sales team can manage the entire quote creation and sending process directly from CRM.

Zoho Inventory holds your product lists and stock, among other things. By keeping data synchronized with CRM, your sales team is always working with real-time availability of your inventory. This prevents quoting items that are out of stock or no longer in production, and ensures your sales and finance teams are aligned.

Native Finance Modules in CRM

In this section we'll address the native Quotes and Products modules in Zoho CRM. These two native modules are best for simple quoting and inventory needs.

Zoho CRM includes a native Quotes module where sales teams can manually create quotes for prospects. Within each quote, you can add product or service details, as well as add pricing, taxes, and terms. Each quote can then be associated with a Contact, Account, or Deal in CRM. Quotes created from this module are great for simple sales processes but are not connected to your accounting system by default.

Zoho CRM also includes a native Products module which stores information on the products or services your company sells. You can record details like product names, descriptions, SKUs, and more. These products can then be manually added to quotes or deals within CRM, but stock levels and real-time inventory aren't tracked by default.

As mentioned, these two native modules are best for simple quoting and inventory needs. For more sophisticated requirements that make full use of the Zoho suite and link your sales and accounting data together, you'll want to configure the Zoho Finance integration within Zoho CRM. This links Zoho CRM with Zoho Books and Inventory to fully unify your pricing, quoting, and accounting data.

Products in Zoho CRM

The Products module is where you store and manage all of the products or services that you sell. This module acts as the foundation for every quote and sales order you make in CRM, because every item included in a quote and sales order must first exist as a product record in CRM.

Each product record includes key details that your sales team needs when creating quotes, like unit price, SKU, and more. You can even organize products into categories or organize by vendor, which makes it easier to manage larger product catalogs or add products to quotes quickly.

Once you've added your products or services to the products module, you can add them as line items directly to your quotes. And when a sales rep is generating a quote, CRM will automatically pull in the relevant product or service details and pricing from the deal.

It's important to note that while the Products module can store details like pricing and product descriptions, it doesn't fully manage stock levels. For businesses that need inventory tracking, you'll need to turn on the Finance integration in CRM.

Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ) in CRM

Zoho CRM also includes CPQ (Configure, Price, Quote) as an out-of-the-box option that helps standardize and automate how quotes are created. CPQ allows you to define product rules and pricing logic in your CRM system so your team can make accurate, customized quotes quickly and efficiently.

CPQ is designed for businesses that want to keep their quoting process entirely in the CRM, but still needs to send quotes that are more complex than a simple list of products and prices. If your quoting process includes product bundles, dependencies between items, or other rules that affect pricing, CPQ helps you manage that without relying on manual processes.

With CPQ, you can configure and save multiple product combinations based on how you want to sell them. Then, when it's time for you to send a quote to a customer, you can select the saved combination and send a quote to a customer, all without any more manual effort to put the combination together.

You can also set pricing for each combination, including discounts and taxes. CPQ allows you to create pricing rules that adjust automatically depending on the combination of products being sold. You can adjust pricing based on quantity, combinations of products, or other specific conditions. You can also add logic that adjusts quotes for high volume purchases or automatically adds complimentary items when certain products are selected. When creating a quote, pricing updates in real time as products are added.

Using the above configurations, your team can quickly create accurate quotes that are uniquely customized depending on the situation. This makes the quoting process faster, more consistent, and far less prone to errors.

Setting up the Finance Integration

If you're using Zoho CRM in conjunction with Zoho's finance applications like Zoho Books, Expense, Billing, or Inventory, you'll likely want to turn on the Finance integration in Zoho CRM so that your sales and financial data is shared among those apps.

To set up the integration, while in CRM simply click on the setup gear icon at the top right, look at the Marketplace list and click Zoho.Then scroll to the Zoho Finance Suite Integration and click Manage. From there, you can click Activate and configure how you'd like the data to pass between Zoho CRM and the Zoho Finance Suite. Once the integration is activated, you will see a Finance section in CRM that can display quotes, invoices, sales orders, and more.

If you're not on Zoho One and are only paying for Zoho CRM, you'll have to purchase licenses for one or all of the applications within the Zoho Finance Suite (Zoho Books, Inventory, Billing, and Expense) to then be able to turn on the integration. Once the licenses are purchased, you'll follow the same process as above to turn on the integration.

When using the Finance integration, you'll also want to deactivate the default Quotes and Products module to prevent confusing amongst your sales team. To deactivate a module, navigate to Setup -> Customization -> Modules and Fields. Then find the both the Quotes and Products modules and click the "Status" button on the right to deactivate them.

Using Third-Party Integrations

While integrating Zoho CRM with the Zoho Finance suite is the most seamless integration, businesses that already use other accounting or billing platforms can still connect them to Zoho CRM. Zoho CRM supports integration with a variety of finance tools like QuickBooks, Xero, Stripe, RazorPay, and many more.

To integrate Zoho CRM with a third-party tool, click on the Marketplace on the top right side of the screen, or go to Setup -> Marketplace. Then, click on All under the Marketplace drop-down and search for the application you'd like to integrate. Once you've found the app you want to integrate, simply follow the integration instructions to start passing data between the two systems.

If your business uses a specialized quoting system that we don't already have an integration created for, you'll need to use a custom integration. To build your own custom integration, you can use Zoho Flow. Flow is a drag-and-drop custom integration builder that allows you to connect Zoho with over a thousand third-party solutions, all with no scripting. This is often the fastest way to connect systems without writing any code. For more advanced requirements, custom integrations can be built using APIs to send and receive data between Zoho CRM and other systems. If you don't have the know-how to do this, you can work with a Zoho Partner.

Creating and Sending Quotes

With the Finance integration enabled, you can manually create quotes (called estimates within the Finance integration), sales orders, or invoices from a contact, account, or deal record. To create a quote manually, click the Finance section of the related list in a record, and click "New Estimate," "New Sales Order," or "New Invoice." Then select the products or services you'd like to include. These will be synced from Zoho Inventory. Zoho CRM will then create a professional looking estimate, sales order, or invoice using a template from Zoho Books.

You can also automatically create quotes (estimates) based on a deal stage. To do this, go into the setup -> Marketplace -> Zoho. Then scroll to the Zoho Finance Suite Integration and click Manage. From there scroll down to the CRM Trigger Points, and configure when you want an estimate to be automatically created, accepted, and voided. The estimates that are created based on a deal stage can include product/service details by selecting specific products or services in the Product/Service drop down menu. Each estimate can either reflect the value of the associated deal or the total price of the products/services you select to appear on the quote.

Once these quotes are automatically created, they can be sent automatically to the prospect. To send them automatically, you'd create a workflow with Zoho Books to send an email from with the quote attached. To do this, navigate to Settings -> Automation -> Workflow Actions. Click "New Email Alert" and create an email alert based on the "Estimate" module. Then choose which email template to use (or build a new one yourself), choose who the sender and recipient are, and hit "Save."

This setup ensures that quotes are created at the exact time they're needed and contain the correct info without manual effort. It also helps maintain consistency, since every quote will follow the same structure and pull data from the same product and pricing sources.

See this page to learn more about how to configure the Zoho CRM and Finance Suite integration.

Tracking and Managing Sent Quotes

Once a quote has been sent, you can track whether it's been viewed, accepted, or declined. You can even require a prospect to sign to accept a quote using Zoho Sign. The quote's status will update in both Zoho Books and Zoho CRM in real time. This allows your sales team to track every quote's progress without leaving the CRM.

Automation is possible by using a quote's status as a trigger. For example, if a quote is accepted, you can create a workflow to automatically create a sales order or move the deal to the next stage in your sales process. If a quote is viewed but not responded to, you can create a workflow or cadence to follow up with the prospect. Or, if a quote is denied, you can configure a workflow to create a follow-up task or send out a survey.

Monitoring quotes through the integration between Zoho CRM and Books is a great way for your team to stay organized. It gives both your sales and finance team a view of where each deal stands so that they're both fully appraised of every deal and can take the next necessary steps as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Watch this 2 minute video to see how to convert an approved quote into an invoice.

Client Portal in Zoho Books

The Zoho Books client portal gives your prospects and customers a single place to view their quotes, invoices, and other transaction history with your business. When a quote is shared sent to a customer, a record of that quote is also present in the client portal. There, a customer can open it, download a PDF, leave a comment, or accept or decline it online. And if you have Zoho Sign connected, the customer can complete the acceptance by signing electronically.

Every action a customer takes in the portal updates the corresponding status in Zoho Books and CRM. This allows your sales team to monitor the status of documents without sending separate emails or making follow-up calls to check if a quote or invoice was viewed. The client portal also makes it simple for your clients to see their transaction history because it gives them a central space to view all of their documents.

To set up the client portal, navigate to Zoho Books and click the Sales module on the left side of the screen. Then click Customers and choose the customer that you'd like to set up the client portal for. Once you've clicked the customer name, go to the top right of the page and hit the More drop down menu. There you'll see the button to Configure Customer Portal. From here, you can invite the client to their portal.

Watch this 4 minute video to see how to set up the client portal in Zoho Books