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Proposal templates

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Proposal templates

A quote is a price. A proposal is the pitch around it, there to win the booking: your logo, your words, photos of the room, testimonials, the menu, and the details the client gave you on their lead, with the quote itself sitting in the middle where the client can adjust it and accept it. You design a proposal once as a proposal template, built from a set of blocks, then choose it on any quote. When the client opens their quote link, they see the whole page, and the Accept button on it books the date and takes them on to the terms and the deposit.

A proposal shows only on the client's online quote page. The quote's PDF and a printed quote are always the plain quote, with no proposal around them.

This article covers building a proposal template, the blocks you can use, previewing it against a real lead, and putting it on a quote.

Why use a proposal

A quote on its own lists lines and totals. That is enough for a client who has already decided. For a client who is still comparing you with two other venues or caterers, the page around the price does the selling:

  • a short pitch in your own voice
  • a photo of the room set for dinner, or of last season's wedding cake
  • the menu they would be eating
  • the date, times, guest count and Space they asked about, so they can see you listened
  • what happens after they say yes

A proposal puts all of that on the same page as the quote, so the client reads the pitch, sees the price, and accepts without switching between an attachment, an email and a link.

Templates, not one-offs

You build a proposal template once and reuse it. Weddings, corporate dinners, a catering pitch for office lunches: save each as its own template and it is ready the next time a similar lead comes in. Go to Leads, then Proposal templates in the sidebar, just under Quotes. Type a name (for example "Weddings" or "Corporate dinners") into New proposal template and Create drops you straight into the builder. All proposal templates at the top of the builder takes you back to the list.

The template is the design. It carries no client of its own. The lead's details only appear when a quote using the template is opened, so one template serves every client it fits.

Building with blocks

A proposal template is a flat stack of full-width blocks, top to bottom. Use + Insert to add one, drag the handle to reorder, and the preview updates as you go. Blocks come in two groups.

Content blocks hold what you put in them:

  • Text is a rich-text block for your pitch, with headings, bold and bullet lists. Merge fields fill in from the lead: [first name], [event type], [event date], [guests], [space] and [quote total].
  • Logo drops in your branding logo.
  • Image places a picture from your Files library, so you can reuse photos you have already uploaded. Use Replace file on a picture in Files and every template showing it uses the new one. Files won't let you delete a picture while a template still shows it, so remove it from the Image block first.
  • Gallery puts 2 to 4 pictures from your Files library side by side, such as the room set three ways or a few dishes from the menu. Choose Landscape, Square or Portrait under Crop and every picture is trimmed to that shape so the row lines up. The arrow on a picture moves it one place to the left. On a phone, two pictures stay side by side, four go two across, and three stack one above the other. As with an Image block, a picture can't be deleted from Files while a gallery shows it.
  • Menu shows a menu from your Menus library, with its courses, dishes and dietary notes. Pick the menu on the block. Caterers and restaurants often keep one template per menu.
  • Testimonial shows a past client's words in quotation marks, with their name and an optional detail line such as "Wedding, March 2026" underneath.
  • Button is a button with your own text that opens a link: a web page (in a new tab, so the client keeps their quote open), an email address (start the link with mailto:) or a phone number (start it with tel:). It uses your branding accent colour. Good uses are a virtual tour, a gallery, a floor plan or a "Book a site visit" page.
  • Divider is a break between two sections of the page: a full-width line, a short centred line, or three dots. The space around it is set for you, like the space between every block.

From the lead blocks read the quote's lead, so you never retype what the client already told you:

  • Booking details shows the date, start and finish times, and guest count from the lead, under the lead's event type.
  • Space shows the lead's Space: its name, address, capacity and size. Access instructions such as gate codes and parking notes never appear on a proposal, because the client can forward their quote link to anyone.
  • Quote marks where the quote sits on the page. Everything above the Quote block shows above the quote, and everything below it shows after the quote and its Accept button. A template without a Quote block puts the quote at the end. A template has one Quote block, so once you add it the Quote option leaves the block picker. Drag the block to move the quote.

A block with nothing to show is left off the client's page. A lead with no Space, for example, simply shows no Space block, rather than an empty box. The builder preview still shows the block with a note saying why it is empty.

Fonts

Each template has its own heading and body font, chosen from the same webfont catalogue as your menus. The builder preview uses the real fonts, so what you see is what the client gets.

Preview against a real lead

At the top of the preview, the Preview with picker lets you swap between Sample data and any of your open leads. Pick a lead and the Booking details and Space blocks fill in with that client's details, the merge fields in your Text blocks fill in, and the Quote block shows the lead's sent quote, or its newest draft if none has been sent. You read the page exactly as the client will before it goes anywhere.

Putting a proposal on a quote

A proposal reaches a client on a quote. There are two ways to choose the template:

  • On the quote. Open the quote and choose a template from Proposal, next to Valid until. It saves as soon as you pick it. You can change it at any time, including after the quote has been sent: the client sees the new proposal the next time they open their link.
  • On a reply template. A reply template that sends a quote can also choose one from Proposal (optional), under Send a quote. Every quote that reply template raises, whether you send the reply yourself or Auto Reply sends it, uses that proposal template. See sending a quote or invoice in a reply.

The client opens the same quote link they always would. The proposal wraps the quote on that online page while the quote is open, whether it is still a draft you have shared early or a sent quote. Once the client accepts or declines, the page goes back to the plain quote, because the offer has been answered and the page is now the record of it. The quote's PDF and the printed copy never carry the proposal, so the version an accounts team receives is just the figures.

A proposal replaces the lead form's sales brochure on that quote. If a lead type has a sales PDF and the quote also has a proposal template, the client sees the proposal.

Editing a template that is in use

A proposal template has no frozen copy. It renders fresh every time a client opens a quote that uses it, so fixing a typo or swapping a photo here fixes it on every open quote straight away, without resending anything. It also means your edits are not private once a quote has gone out. The builder tells you how many open quotes use the template, so you know when that applies.

Deleting a proposal template never deletes a quote. Quotes that used it simply show without a proposal from then on. The delete confirmation tells you how many open quotes that affects.

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