The goal of this chapter is to walk you through how to create proposals and contracts to provide to your customers/contractors.
Quick Bid provides several built in templates for generating Bid proposals that are ready for submittal. The proposals are generated using Microsoft Word® .dot (template) files.
There are several Proposal Templates included with the program. Additional templates may be made available for download from time to time for clients who maintain a Support Subscription with On Center. Please contact your Account Manager or Support for more information.
By Default, the Templates folder is located at C:\OCS Documents\Quick Bid\Templates. This can be changed by clicking Tools > Options > Folders.
In addition to the templates stored in this folder, there is a file named "Available Proposal-Quotation Fields.doc" - this contains all of the fields available for modifying or creating new proposal templates.
You must have fully-licensed (not a trial or student version) and locally-installed version of Microsoft Word to use or modify Proposals. Microsoft Word is neither included with Quick Bid nor supported by On Center Software. Contact Microsoft for more information about Word.
Generating Proposals
To generate a proposal,
Select the Bid using the Bid List or Bid Navigator
If you select an
Alternate or
Change Order in the Bids Tab or Bid Navigator, the Proposal/Quotation you generate is for that child bid only. To create a Proposal/Quotation on the Base Bid that includes child bids, select the Base Bid in the Bids Tab or Bid Navigator before opening the Proposals screen.
Click the Proposals button on the main toolbar or click Bid > Generate Proposals - the Generate Proposals dialog displays
To generate a
proposal for a
Change Order, you select that
Change Order in the Bid Navigator, then run a normal (Base Bid)
Proposal. The "CO" proposals are run from the Base Bid itself and generate values for all Change Orders in the current
project.
Click once on the proposal template you want to generate. Do not double-click - that will open the template, not generate a proposal.
Click the button to select a recipient from the Contacts list - click to add a contact if needed (hold down <Ctrl> or <Shift> to select multiple contacts)
Click Select
Once all recipients (contacts) are added
Change the Optional Fields at the bottom of the dialog box to indicate the legal date of the proposal and how long the proposal is good for
Click OK to generate the proposal
Quick Bid generates the Proposal and opens Word to display the document. The Proposal may be printed, saved (as a Word document), or sent (via e-mail) from Microsoft Word. To save the proposal as a PDF, you must have a PDF "printer" installed on the computer.
If you select multiple contacts, Quick Bid generates a separate
Proposal (Word doc) for each recipient.
Date Formats
Quick Bid's Proposals use the Windows Regional settings/formatting for date fields.
In Control Panel, click on "Regional Settings" or "Clock, Language, Region", depending on your version of Windows.
In the dialog box, change the "Long Date" format to whatever you want Quick Bid to use. Longer formats, especially those that include the day of the week, may "wrap" in your proposals.