What is the approach to quote a project?

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Posted on by DJAN_REFACTOR

Hi all,

I’m new here so apologies if I am asking questions at the wrong place or at the wrong way.

FYI Background:
1 year ago I had little to no knowledge about Microsoft NAV (both technical and functional).

A friend with a medium size business (business in installing fireplaces: all sales are actually projects that take +/-4 days) hired me to help him look for and select a good integrator for NAV.

We found a partner with their own standard extension on top of NAV. One year later we could not get at the point were it could meet the requirements. We now wait a few months and go with Business Central to avoid having to implement changes twice.

For myself I learned a lot with trying to manage the implementation (even whilst it failed and it was with a partner) and since I’m a developer (.Net) I took some time to train development (chose not to invest time in the “old” nav). However I’m (very) far from expert..

Actual question:

In standard Business Central (without 3th party extension) you can create sales quotes, orders and Invoices. You can also create jobs (projects) however it seems jobs are independent? Did I miss something and can you import sales quote/order lines into a project? Seems strange to have to create it all again manually. Fyi: a quote typically has some items and then some installation prices.

The other approach I found is create a job and send as a quote. But.. can someone explain me the difference and implications for taking this approach?
If a customer agrees can you also create something like an order confirmation?

Thank you for your help. I did spend a lot time in searching myself before asking here but I just can’t seem to find good information. I just want to be well informed for discussion with actual integrator do we do not buy/rent extensions we would not need or are already in the standard software.

Thanks,

Davy

Categories:

Dynamics 365 Business Central

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JAngle 33,159 on at

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RE: What is the approach to quote a project?

Sales and Jobs are currently very separate modules. I’m sure the community will be interested in an extension which brings them together. Myself included.

Netronic is good for visual planning. Failing that you could dabble with PowerApps. You can make calendar based views in there.
DJAN_REFACTOR 15 on at

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RE: What is the approach to quote a project?

Hi Josh,

Thank you for your answer and apologies for this delayed response.

If I make a quote in the Jobs module is that also ending up in the sales module (under quotes) or how does that work?

Are they totally different worlds that are consuming the same Items table for example?

Just wandering since the company indeed mostly takes on projects, there is however also some direct sales for like maintenance products or some options sold afterwards of things of that kind. That however is just a sale and I would think we would just use the SO module for that.

For reporting however if those are separated that could confuse things (also for the end users since they are not used to a more complex environment as BC and need to be in different places for quotes).

Ideally we could create a sales quote and convert it to an order. Then in the orders we could select one and have an action to create a job from it and the job module would import all items in it. Maybe I can develop something like that in an extension? I plan to setup all items like BOM. So I could create a standard "Installation" item with below it a service item for 8h of work that could end up in the job.

End goal: we also have a product called "visual planning" and we want to projects to be visible in that system so we can plan the projects in it.

(that is actually what the extension the 3th party provider wants to sell us does but it does so much more things we don't need and is expensive)

Thanks again!
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JAngle 33,159 on at

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RE: What is the approach to quote a project?

Implication of using a job over a SO is the job cannot do shipping. It instead views items as something that get consumed as part of the job.

If the business takes on projects (combination of items, resources and other costs) I can see why you would use jobs. If it is a product selling organisation then sales makes more sense.

No “job” confirmation exists but I would check out this video on adapting the job quote so you can have one report with many layouts: www.hougaard.com/.../

Failing that you could copy the job quote report from the base app and then create a new page action on the job card to use it.