New QUICK QUOTE Option
In seconds, you can quickly calculate a quote for your customer with the new “QUICK QUOTE” option.
All AlliancePro and AllianceVF users who provide quotes to their customers, should read this entire email and understand how this new tool can make your job easier.
We have developed a means to deliver a QUICK QUOTE to your customer with the minimal amount of data required.
The following is a screen shot of the new QUICK QUOTE screen.
Here is a summary of how the QUICK QUOTE screen works:
- Enter the CUSTOMER CODE or click the “Customer” link to search the customer database to find the name of the customer requesting the quote.
- Select the customer contact who is asking for the quote. If it does not show in the list, click on the “Contact” link to find/add the name of the person asking for the quote.
- Enter the ZIP or city/state of the origin.
- Enter the ZIP or city/state of the destination
- Choose the truck size the customer needs
- Optional - Enter the weight of the shipment.
- Optional – Enter any “Free Form” notes about the quote.
- Click the “GET QUICK QUOTE” button at the bottom of the screen.
- The system will calculate the customer rate based on the information provided.
- If the customer has their own rate table, the system will use the appropriate rate table.
- If the customer does not have a rate table, the system will use the default tariff rate table.
- If the customer does have a rate table, but the data provided does not fit with any of their rate tables, the system will use the default tariff rate table.
- If both a truck size and weight is provided, the system will first try to “rate by weight” if both “rate by weight” and “rate by truck size” rate tables exist.
- If you want to check for fleet availability, click on the icon of the binoculars. This will open up the “closest truck search” screen and pre-fill the origin/destination and weight data so that you can quickly search for trucks.
- If you want to continue to BUILD THE ORDER, you can click on “Go to QUICK ORDER” or “Go to NEW ORDER” to continue building the order. This will take the data from this screen and pre-fill the respective fields in the order screen so you can continue to take the quote.
- If you want to save the quote, click “CREATE QUOTE”. This will take the data from this screen and pre-fill the respective fields in the order screen, default much of the missing data, and set the order type to QUOTE. All you need to do is SAVE the quote. If you SAVE THE QUOTE, they system will generate the usual emails to all interested parties (sales people, management, etc.) who want emails of quotes based on the quote email rules.
This handy new QUOTING tool has the following features:
- Extremely fast to create a quote for your customer using a minimal amount of information.
- Uses the selected customers rate table or tariff based on your rate engine rules.
- Provides a handy “scratch pad” to take additional notes while talking with the customer
- Provides a quick link to do truck searches so you can quickly determine if you have capacity nearby.
- Allows you to quickly jump into the traditional order screen if the customer decides to move the quote to an actual order. All the data from this screen populates the corresponding fields in the Order screen, removing any need to re-key data.
- Allows you to quickly jump into the traditional order screen to save this as a QUOTE with minimal effort.
How can you navigate to this QUICK QUOTE screen? There are several ways to navigate to this screen, including:
- From the “Manage Orders” screen, you can click on the “QUICK QUOTE” button.
- You can set a “FAVORITES” button to have QQ show in the list of “Favorites” at the top right of the screen.
- You can find the customer/contact data in the “Contact Information” screen and click on the “QQ” shortcut to jump to the Quick Quote. This method automatically copies the CUSTOMER NAME and CONTACT NAME into the Quick Quote screen.
- You can go to main menu ORDERS and sub-menu QUICK QUOTE.
SPEED TIP: Is there a faster way to get data into QUICK QUOTE? Absolutely! Try this out.
- Go to CUSTOMERS and then “Contact Information”. This will open up a screen where you can search for any CUSTOMER and/or CUSTOMER CONTACT using many different filter mechanisms. For example (see below), search on all customer contacts who has a first name starting with of “S” and a last name starting with “G”. The system will search your database and show the results.
- From the results list, click on the “QQ” (Quick Quote) button to jump to the Quick Quote screen. The system will pre-fill the CUSTOMER NAME and the CONTACT NAME for you. Now you are ready to enter the rest of the quote data!
