Building a Quotation

A quotation is the detailed pricing breakdown for your event. It lists every arrangement your client is getting, organised into clear sections, with costs calculated from real ingredient prices. This is where you turn a conversation about “soft pinks and lots of greenery” into an accurate, professional quote.

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Recipe Groups

You build a quotation from sections, added from the Add Sections panel. The section you’ll use most is a Recipe Group — a block of arrangements that belong together. Give each one a clear name like “Bridal Party”, “Ceremony”, “Reception”, or “Venue Flowers”, whatever suits the event. You can add up to 20 Recipe Groups in a quotation. Each Recipe Group has a name and a few controls for ordering, budget tracking, and what the client sees. Tick Hide this section to take a whole block off their proposal, such as a set of working notes or a section you’re still pricing up. To keep single items off the proposal while the section stays on it, mark those items instead — see How each item is used.

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Removing Recipe Groups

Check one thing before you delete: a group holding items that are already on an event order is kept back. The rest of your selection is still removed. To remove a single group, open its Options menu and choose Remove Section, or click the bin icon in the group’s header, then confirm. To remove several at once, tick the box beside each Recipe Group you want gone. A bar above the groups gives you Select all groups, a Delete button showing how many you’ve picked, and Clear to drop the selection. Click Delete and confirm. Only Recipe Groups have tick boxes; the other sections are removed one at a time. If any of the groups you picked are held back, a message tells you they “could not be removed” and names each one. Removing a single group in that state gives you Unable to remove section. Delete the event order those items sit on first, then remove the group. See Creating Event Orders.

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Adding items to a Recipe Group

Each item inside a Recipe Group represents a single arrangement — a bridal bouquet, a table centre, a ceremony arch, and so on.

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How each item is used

Click the mark on an item’s row to say how you’re using that item. You get four choices, and the table below shows what each one does. Once you’ve chosen, the row shows the short form: Included, Optional, Internal, or Excluded. Reach for Internal workroom item when you’re making something you don’t charge for separately, such as conditioning stems or spare heads. Reach for Not currently included when you want to park an arrangement without deleting it, then switch the mark back if the client asks for it after all.

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Recording the client’s answer on an optional item

When your client rings to say which options they want, you record the answer on the quotation. Their proposal shows each optional item with its price and asks them to get in touch before signing, so the answer comes to you rather than through the portal. Pick from the second control on the item’s row.

• Awaiting decision — the item stays on the proposal with its price, and nobody makes it yet.
• Selected — the item counts towards the total, goes to the workroom, and reaches the invoice.
• Declined — the item comes off the proposal, and nobody makes it.

Set the decision and the total moves straight away, so the figure you read out on the next call is the one your client agreed to.

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Service Team

Service Team is the section for the people on the day, such as your setup crew, on-site florists, and anyone else you charge for by the hour. Add it from the Add Sections panel. You get one Service Team section per quotation. Click Add Labour for each role you’re charging for and fill in the Title, No. Staff, Hours, and the hourly Rate. Choose a Tax Rate if the charge is taxable. Digital Florists multiplies staff by hours by rate and shows the line total under each row as you type. Whether you enter the rate before or after VAT follows the Pricing Display setting covered below. Each role has a description box underneath. Anything you write there is carried through to the client’s proposal.

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How pricing works

Each item gives you two ways to price it: auto totals or locked totals. You’ll see the toggle on the item’s pricing row.

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Auto totals (the default)

With auto totals, Digital Florists calculates the price from the recipe. It takes the cost of all the ingredients, applies the item’s markup, and adds any labour. The numbers update as you add or change ingredients. The markup multiplier is set per item. If your ingredients cost £10 and the markup is 3.5×, the price becomes £35 before VAT. New items pick up your default markup from quotation settings, but you can override it on any item.

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Locked totals (manual pricing)

Sometimes you know exactly what you want to charge, regardless of what the ingredients cost. Tick Locked totals on an item to type in your own figure. Digital Florists won’t overwrite it, even if you add or change ingredients later. This matters when working with templates. If your template has set prices, lock them before saving. Otherwise, when you or your team start adding ingredients to build recipes, the price recalculates and overwrites your quoted figure.

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VAT and your totals

The price you set on each item is the figure before VAT. If the item has a tax rate, Digital Florists works out the VAT and adds it to give the total your client pays. If an item has no tax rate, its total is simply the price you set. There’s a Pricing Display control in Display Settings with two options:

• Tax Exclusive — you enter and see unit prices before VAT, and the VAT is shown added on top.
• Tax Inclusive — you enter and see unit prices with the VAT already included.

Whichever you choose, the Quotation Summary always shows three figures for each section and for the whole quote: Net (ex VAT), Tax, and Gross (inc VAT). The Payable total (inc VAT) at the bottom is the amount your client pays.

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Itemised prices on the proposal and invoices

Open the proposal designer, click the Arrangements section, and look under Pricing. Tick Show individual recipe prices on the proposal and invoices to show a price against every arrangement, or untick it to show one price per section. Your choice covers the whole event, not one section at a time. Any invoice you raise from then on follows the same choice. A section carrying more than one VAT rate is still itemised on the invoice, so each rate shows its own tax.

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Reordering items and Recipe Groups

You can drag and drop to rearrange both Recipe Groups and the items within them. Put the most important sections at the top, or arrange things in the order the client will experience them on the day — ceremony first, reception second, and so on. Service Team moves in the same zone as your Recipe Groups, so you can drop it between two groups or leave it at the end. Seating Plan and Colour Palette stay above that zone, and Fees and Discounts and the Cost Summary stay below it.

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The seating plan on the client’s proposal

Fill in the Seating Plan section and your client sees the room on their proposal, table types and counts included. It shows in the proposal’s Venue section, where Show seating details turns it on and Layout offers Donut, Compact, or Detailed. Untick it to keep the seating as a working note for your team instead. See Adjustments and seating for how to record the tables.

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Ingredient totals across the whole event

When you want to know what to buy for the whole event, open the Options menu in the quotation header and choose Quotation Menu. This adds up every ingredient across all your Recipe Groups and items in one place, so you can see total quantities and costs without going recipe by recipe. The Quotation Menu has three tabs:

• Recipes — a list of every recipe in the quotation.
• Ingredients — every ingredient rolled up across the whole event, with Total Qty and Total Cost columns.
• Category Breakdown — the same totals grouped by ingredient category.

On the Ingredients tab you can tick the ingredients you want and click Create Task to send them to a new task, pre-filled with the names and quantities. Use it as a buying or make-up checklist for the team. There’s also a Print button in the header to print the whole menu. You only buy for what you’re making, so the menu leaves out excluded items and declined options. An option still waiting on your client’s answer is left out too, on the printed list and on anything you send to a task. Record the decision and it joins the totals. See Event day for the printed output.

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Saving your work

Digital Florists autosaves your quotation as you build it, and there’s a Save changes button in the header for when you want to save manually. The header shows whether your changes are saved, saving, or pending.

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When someone else has saved the same quotation

If a colleague saved the same quotation while your screen was open, your save stops and you’re asked to refresh first. Refresh, check your change against what’s now on screen, and make it again. Their work isn’t written over in the meantime.

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Common questions

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What’s next?