Creating a Vendor Quote

Vendor quotes give you an easy way to include a third party’s services with markup in your projects.

You can manage vendor quotes by navigating to the Vendor Quotes section within your project.

To create a Vendor Quote, first press Add Vendor Quote.

On this screen: The Vendor Quotes section shows a table titled “Vendor Quotes” with columns for Vendor, Description, One Time Cost, Recurring Cost, Markup, One Time Revenue, and Recurring Revenue. Each existing quote appears as a clickable row. An + Add Vendor Quote button appears in the footer of the table. While the project is in Building status, a Delete action appears on hover for each row.

Next, you can provide some basic information about the vendor you received a quote from.

On this screen: The “New Vendor Quote” form has two columns. The left column contains a multi-line text area labeled “High level description of work to be done,” a Lines of Business dropdown, a Vendor field with autocomplete (placeholder: “Acme, Inc”), and address fields (Street Address, Street 2, City, State, Zip, Country). The right column contains a checkbox labeled “Derive one-time and recurring costs from services?”, a Markup number field, a One Time Cost number field, and a Recurring Cost section with a frequency dropdown (None / Monthly / Quarterly / Yearly), a Per Term amount field, and a Term field. A Submit button and a Back button appear at the bottom.

Overall Pricing vs. Derive from Services

Vendor quotes will allow you to set up your quote pricing in one of two ways:

If you leave Derive one-time and recurring costs from services? unchecked, you will set up the project’s pricing on the overview page.
If you check Derive one-time and recurring costs from services?, the One Time Cost and Per Term cost will reflect the sum of the service pricing you define in the Vendor Description area.

Recurring Cost

Regardless of your choice about deriving costs from the services above, you will set the billing frequency for any recurring fees using the Recurring Cost dropdown to select either Monthly, Quarterly, or Yearly. Whichever option you choose here will govern the frequency option available for recurring services you may add to your quote. If you leave it set to none, you will not have the ability to add recurring services to your vendor quote.

Price Override Tracking

Revenue values you enter manually are treated as price overrides and tracked independently from margin calculations. This eliminates the rounding issues that can occur when trying to match a specific revenue amount, and lets you enter just Cost and Revenue without specifying a Target Margin. The application adapts to your preferred approach.

On this screen: The vendor quote detail view shows editable cost and revenue fields. Revenue values entered manually are flagged as price overrides and tracked independently. The form adapts based on whether you enter Cost + Margin or Cost + Revenue directly, and a note indicates the current override state.

Service-Level Pricing

The Service Pricing tab is always available on every vendor quote. You can add and price services directly on the quote, entering Cost, Margin, or Revenue at the service level with the same automatic calculations as quote-level pricing.

When you price individual services, the Quote Detail tab automatically calculates and displays the rolled-up costs and revenue for the quote. The quote-level cost and revenue fields become locked, as their values are now determined by the sum of service-level pricing.

This approach is well-suited for staff augmentation scenarios or subcontractor quotes where you want to price each line independently before rolling up to a quote total.

On this screen: The “Service Pricing” tab on a vendor quote shows a table of individual services. Each row has editable Cost, Margin, and Revenue fields. Entering any two of the three values automatically calculates the third. The tab is available on every vendor quote regardless of whether “Derive from services” is enabled.

Revenue Calculation: Margin vs. Markup

Vendor quotes support two methods for calculating revenue from cost:

Margin-based: The percentage you enter represents profit as a share of the final revenue. For example, a 20% margin on a $100 cost results in $125 revenue (because $25 profit is 20% of $125). The formula is: Revenue = Cost / (1 - Margin%).
Markup-based: The percentage you enter is applied directly on top of cost. For example, a 20% markup on a $100 cost results in $120 revenue. The formula is: Revenue = Cost x (1 + Markup%).

You can choose the calculation method when creating or editing a vendor quote. The same method applies to both one-time and recurring pricing on the quote.

This setting controls how the platform interprets the percentage value you enter. When you enter Cost and a percentage, the Revenue field updates automatically based on the selected calculation method. You can also override revenue directly by entering a specific amount — the platform tracks manual overrides separately.

Billing Method: Time & Materials vs. Fixed Fee

Each vendor quote can be set to one of two billing methods:

Time & Materials (T&M): Costs are calculated based on hours worked and rates. The pricing model applies the margin or markup ratio to derive revenue from actual time and cost.
Fixed Fee: The total price is a set amount regardless of how many hours are spent. This is common for subcontractor engagements with a defined deliverable and flat cost.

The billing method is set on the quote overview and affects how the pricing fields are interpreted and displayed.

Add Services to the Vendor Quote

Via the User Interface

You can add services to your vendor quote under the Vendor Description tab. You can align these services to the phases in your account, give them a name, and define Service Description and Language Field language for them.

On this screen: The Vendor Description tab displays a data-entry table with tabs at the top: Vendor Quote, Vendor Description, and Our Description. The table has columns for Phase (a dropdown), Service (a text input), Qty (a number field), and Content (a textarea for the service description). A View dropdown in the upper right switches between language fields. When the “Pricing” language view is active, the table instead shows Phase, Service, Qty, Hours, Rate, Cost, and Frequency columns. An arrow dropdown button on each row allows adding a subservice or deleting the row. An Import Quoted Services (CSV or Excel) button appears above the table.

You can also add pricing information. If you’ve chosen to derive from services, click on the pricing screen and set the attributes available.

The Phase selection is only used on Professional (One Time) services, so you can leave it blank on any services that will be Managed (recurring) services.
The Quantity field multiplies the Cost field to get the total revenue for that line.
The Hours field works in a couple of different ways:
- If derived from services is enabled, hours can be multiplied by the Rate to give a cost for both Professional and Managed Third Party Services.
- If derived from services is disabled, hours are informational only.
The Rate field works in tandem with the Hours field as described above for services where derived from services is enabled.
The Unit Cost field will be live-calculated with the Rate and Hours field results if those fields have a value and can otherwise be overwritten. If you change the Rate or Hours fields after setting the Cost field, the value will be recalculated.

On this screen: The Vendor Description tab in Pricing view shows the table with Phase, Service, Qty, Hours, Rate, Cost, and Frequency columns. The Rate and Cost fields are editable when “Derive from services” is enabled and read-only otherwise. The Cost field auto-calculates as Hours x Rate when both have values. The Frequency column is a dropdown. A Submit button appears in the table footer.

Once you’re ready, click Submit. Now you can see a full listing of the vendor description of their services.

Via File Import

You can also import services to the Vendor Quote from a spreadsheet, following most of the same rules for importing your own services to the platform.

On this screen: The import interface presents a file upload area labeled “Quoted Services (CSV or Excel)” with an Import button. After uploading, the platform shows a column mapping step where you match spreadsheet columns to the required fields. A Process Import button finalizes the import.

The following columns can be imported, with required columns noted with an *:

Phase*: The Phase the service is aligned to in your Project.
Service: The name of the Service as it will be presented in the Scope of Work.
Subservice: Subservices that belong to the service. Following the convention from our regular spreadsheet importing method, for every subservice, repeat all of the initial columns (Phase and Service) to indicate that a particular subservice belongs to a service.
Quantity*: The quantity of the service in your Project.
Service Description*: The description of the Service that will flow into the Vendor Description field.
Language Field Columns: For every Language field configured in your account, you will find a column available for import.

After you’ve mapped the columns, click the Process Import button. You will be shown a screen of successfully imported services.

Setup “Our Description”

To finish, go to the Our Description tab and make any changes to how the language will appear in your Project. You can change the Language to view select to the fields on the services and make changes.

On this screen: The Our Description tab shows a table with tabs at the top: Vendor Quote, Vendor Description, and Our Description. Services are grouped by phase, with each phase name appearing as a bold header row. The table has two columns: Service (the service name) and Content (an editable textarea showing the service description language). A View dropdown in the upper right switches between language fields. Subservice rows appear indented beneath their parent service. A Submit button appears in the table footer.

Press Submit to save. If you need to make changes to the Service name or add/change subservices, return to the Vendor Description tab.

Viewing the Services in the List of Professional Services

You can now navigate to the main Professional Services section of the platform to sequence the services with your other services in the Project. The language you defined under Our Description will become the Service Description and Language Field language for your services in your Project. The resource completing the work will be displayed as the Vendor noted in the Vendor Quote.

On this screen: The Professional Services list shows the vendor quote services now available alongside your other project services for sequencing. Each vendor-sourced service displays the vendor name in the Resource column. Services are listed with their name, phase, quantity, and pricing, and can be reordered with the other services in the project.

Permissions

The Vendor Quotes (projects.vendor_quotes) permission under Settings > Roles controls access:

View: See vendor quotes on a project but cannot add or edit them.
Create: Add new vendor quotes to a project.
Manage: Full access — add, edit, and delete vendor quotes.