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About Quotes and Orders for Asset-Based Ordering

A quote is an offer to a customer for specific products and services at a specific price. Quotes can be generated by employee end users such as call center sales representatives, by customers using Siebel eSales, or by a channel partner. The quote may include products and services (configured to show the customer-selected attributes), any discounts by line item and by account, price for each item, and the service and billing accounts for each item. If you use Multiple Price Types, then they detail one-time, recurring, and usage-based fees that are incurred.

For products with components, all levels in the product hierarchy are treated equally. Every level can have pricing, a service asset, and attributes. This structure allows end users to create one quote that spans multiple service accounts and billing accounts. For example, when placing a quote for phone services that span multiple locations, you can identify agreement names for individual line items, as well as applying appropriate pricing discounts and other rules.

Active Quote

An end user session can have only one active quote at a time. Each item that is added to a quote for a customer is added to the active quote. An active quote is useful, because it avoids creating new quotes when you are working with the same customer. The active quote adds all the quotes items of services or products requested by one customer into one quote.

A quote becomes the active quote when:

• The employee end user creates a new quote by clicking the New, Modify, Deactivate, Suspend or Resume buttons in the Installed Assets or Account Summary view.
• The employee end user navigates to the Quote Details view and clicks the Profile button.
• The customer end user goes to the shopping cart.

When an end user makes changes to the service profile of a different account, a different quote is made active. When a new quote is made active, the previously active quote becomes inactive by implication.

When a quote is converted to an order, the quote becomes inactive.

NOTE:  If the employee end user clicks New in the Account Summary or Installed Assets view, and there is already an active quote for the same account, then the end user is taken to the existing active quote. An additional new quote is not created.

Active Order

An order becomes active only when the employee end user creates a new order by clicking the New, Modify, Deactivate, Suspend and Resume buttons in the Installed Assets or Account Summary View.

When an order is submitted, the order becomes inactive.

Quote-to-Sales Order

When a customer approves a quote and it becomes an order, an employee end user such as a CSR (Customer Service Representative) can automatically write the quote information into an order with the click of a button. When the end user clicks the Sales Order button or the Auto Order button, a workflow does the following:

• Generates a new sales order
• Converts all line items in a quote to order line items
• Explodes all quote line items, so that there multiple quantities of an item become individual line items

After a quote is converted to a sales order, the original quote still exists, and can be referenced. You will see the quote number in the order header.

NOTE:  All orders created from quotes are considered Sales Orders. These orders may include items that are physical products and items that are service products. Sales Orders must not be confused with Service Orders. Service Orders are created as a result of a service request and are managed as part of Siebel Field Service.