A quote that lives in a Word doc or a PDF attachment is a dead end the moment it’s sent — no visibility into whether the client opened it, and no path from “accepted” to an invoice without someone re-typing every line. An online quote closes that gap.

Pictured here is a sent statement-of-work quote in EmpireVault’s demo workspace: line items with quantities and prices, a running total, an expiration date, and a status badge showing where things stand. The engagement type behind the quote — time and materials, fixed price, retainer, or subscription — determines which fields show up, so a retainer surfaces billing frequency and minimum commitment where a fixed-price scope shows phases and dates instead. Line items are categorized — one-time, recurring, time-and-materials, milestone, expense, or fee — and that category drives how the total breaks down between billable services and pass-through costs, so the client sees exactly what they’re paying for and why.

Items can be pulled straight from a product catalog instead of typed from scratch, bundled together with roll-up or fixed pricing, and discounted at the line or the whole-quote level, with tax and payment terms already set from account defaults. When the client accepts online, that acceptance is the trigger — EmpireVault can generate the contract and the first invoice from the accepted quote without anyone re-keying a single line item.

That’s the difference between quoting and chasing, in practice. Status and expiry are visible at a glance, so a quote that’s gone quiet for two weeks is easy to spot and follow up on, and a quote that’s accepted turns into billable work the same afternoon instead of the same week.

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