Quote to pull list - How does your team do it?
Hi all,
We've been having some ongoing performance issues with Flex when making large quotes (400+ Lines w/ fetch availability off) and we'd love to hear on how other teams are setting up their inventory to avoid this.
For our quotes, we use "Quote Models" which are virtual packages with the actual relevant inventory items in their contents. When the quote model is brought into a quote the inventory items are brought in with their lines muted. This means when we generate a pull list from the quote all the inventory items are already there and ready to rock.
e.g. a quote model called "Video capture and recording" will include in its contents a camera case and some recording equipment all line muted.
Unfortunately, this set up means that often what would otherwise be one line of information turns out to be 4 or more times its original size. A quote yesterday said 140 lines where only 20 were used for quoting information and the rest is our inventory from all the cases, units, and cables within those cases. It does have the benefit of client friendly wording whilst allowing automatic pull list generation from the quote.
How is your Flex quoting system set up? What's your method of having client friendly names on the quote whilst optimising handover to fulfilment? Do you use suggestions? Do you start from scratch on an empty pull list?
Any response would be much appreciated.
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Hey Joshua Whale,
It sounds like the main concern being expressed here is the line item count threshold on your Quote.
The current best practice for Quotes that expand past that threshold is to start an Event Folder with multiple Quotes that help to spread out that line item count. Event Folders allow you to send all Quotes in a report at once to your client, along with a Budget Summary report that displays the totals of each respective Quote within. For example, you might have an Event Folder with an Equipment Quote, a Labor Quote, and a Show Expense Quote, covering items such as travel and other miscellaneous Services–depending on the size of the job.
Aside from that, everything that you're doing is standard and considered best practice for streamlining Quote-building. Suggestions are a very powerful tool, especially when combined with Suggestion Types, for incorporating customizable packages in addition to the fixed format of a Virtual Package when utilizing the Contents tab. If you're interested in a training session on this subject, please reach out to me at the email below.
For clarity, the main purpose of the line item count threshold is to alert you when you're approaching a point where you may encounter issues with subsequent document generation, such as creating a Pull Sheet or generating an Invoice. The 499 threshold has not been relevant for Invoices in almost 2 years, as we showcased in this YouTube video. The reason for that was the back-end movement of the Financial Document Generator from our older interface of Flex4 to the current Flex5 UI.
The threshold is still relevant for the Equipment List Generator, as it is currently in the roll-out process and has not been released to all our customers yet, as our team monitors it for any issues that arise. Once the Equipment List Generator is completely implemented, we'll likely be updating that threshold quantity to 2,000 lines, as the back end won't support any more than that, but I'm not certain of how we'll be setting guidelines for that at this time.
If you'd like to be included in the roll-out of the Flex5 Equipment List Generator, please reach out to me directly at nickn@flexrentalsolutions.com, and I'll talk with our Product team about adding your system.
Nick Nazario - Customer Success Manager
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