Silver, Gold or Platinum on one quote
Selling in tiers used to mean three quotes. Silver, Gold and Platinum, or three courses against five, went out as three documents that had to stay in step, and the client got three links and no idea which one was live. Accept the wrong one and the event was built on the wrong figures.
A quote can now carry all of them at once.
Two things a package can be
Every group on a quote has a Client options button on its heading row, beside Ungroup. It offers three settings:
- Always included. Where every group starts. The client cannot remove it.
- Client can add or remove this package. The whole group becomes optional, one tick for all of its lines. “Engagement shoot”, “Late bar extension”, “Second room”. You decide whether it arrives ticked or sits there as an extra priced but not counted.
- One of several packages the client picks from. The group joins a set of alternatives. The client sees every package in the set with its price and picks exactly one. They can switch between them, and they cannot pick none.
To build a set: add each package to the quote (Add from items drops a catalog package in as its own group), open Client options on the first one, choose the alternatives setting and type the heading the client reads, for example “Choose your coverage”. Pick the same set on the others, then tick Selected to start on the one the quote should open on. A set always has exactly one.
A quote can hold more than one set, say a coverage set and a separate album set, with optional packages alongside them.
What the client sees
The set’s heading, then each package with a round button beside its name and its own subtotal on the heading row, so nobody has to add lines up to compare. The packages they have not picked stay on the page, faded, with their prices showing. Switching between them re-prices the whole document immediately, down through tax, service charge and gratuity to the total. There is no calculate button and nothing to submit.
Until the quote is accepted, the PDF, the print view and a proposal that embeds the quote all list every package in the set with its subtotal and mark the current pick “(selected)”, so a PDF forwarded to a partner still shows the whole offer. Once it is accepted, only the package they chose prints.
Packages sold by the hour
Each package can still carry line options of its own, including the line marked as the hours. Give Silver a 6 hour coverage line, Gold 8 and Platinum 10, mark each one as the hours, and the finish time printed on the quote follows whichever package the client picks. Accepting puts those times on the booking, so the calendar and the run of show show what was actually agreed.
More than one session on a quote
Related, and shipped alongside it: an hours line can now have a start time of its own. A photographer can quote a 10am getting-ready session for 2 hours and a 2pm ceremony and reception for 8 hours on the same document. Each session prints its own times and length under the line name (“10:00 AM to 12:00 PM (2 hours)”), the header shows the whole booking from earliest start to latest finish, and a session with its own start stays where you put it when the client moves the booking start.
Accepting
Only the package they picked from each set is copied onto the event’s pricing sheet, and an optional package they left off is not copied at all, so a package somebody said no to can never be billed by accident.
A switch reads as one line in the summary written into the lead conversation, naming both packages rather than listing every line in each: “Package: Gold to Platinum”. Because a different package usually means a different day, it raises the same warning a changed guest count or hours does, the one asking you to check crew call times, access and vacate, and what the kitchen is counting on. 1pm will not reconcile that for you, and it will not let a quietly different booking land looking ordinary.
Packages need Account, Invoice settings, “Let clients adjust a quote” switched on, the same setting as the rest of it. Letting a client adjust a quote has the full detail.