How to make a quotation on your phone

A quotation is a priced proposal a buyer can say yes to. To look professional and avoid disputes, it needs five things: a letterhead with your business name and logo, a clear list of items, the quantity of each, the unit price, and the line totals and grand total. A scribbled figure on WhatsApp does none of this — it's easy to misread, easy to dispute, and it doesn't make your business look established.

The slow part has always been building that document. Typing every line, every rate and every total on a phone keyboard is exactly the job nobody wants to do standing behind a counter. The trick is to never type it at all — build the quotation from an order the buyer already assembled.

When a buyer orders from your catalogue link, they've already chosen the items and quantities and the prices are set. That's a quotation waiting to happen.

1. Open the order. Go to your Orders inbox on the app or web and open the order the buyer sent.
2. Tap to quote. One tap converts it into a quotation. ScanPix pulls your branding from the catalogue cover page for the letterhead, lists every item with its quantity and unit price, and calculates line totals and a grand total automatically.
3. Check and send. Review the PDF, adjust anything if the buyer negotiated, and send it back — most sellers just drop it straight into the same WhatsApp chat.

Because the numbers come from the order, not your memory, the prices are accurate and the maths is done. What used to be a fifteen-minute typing job is a tap.

Not everything has a fixed rate. For negotiated or made-to-order lines you'll have set "price on request" in the catalogue. On the quotation, those items are clearly flagged rather than given a false number, and the total carries a note that it excludes them. That keeps the document honest: the buyer sees exactly which lines are still to be priced, and you don't accidentally commit to a rate you meant to discuss.

This matters, so be clear with your buyers. A quotation is a proposal — "here's what it would cost". A GST tax invoice is a legal billing document with GSTIN, tax breakup and compliance formatting, raised after the sale. ScanPix produces professional quotations; it does not do GST invoicing or accounting. When the deal is confirmed and you need to bill it, raise the tax invoice in your GST billing software — the quotation's clean line items give you exactly what to enter. Think of ScanPix as the front of the deal (catalogue → order → quotation) and your billing tool as the back of it.

Since the quotation is a PDF, sending it is the easy part — attach it to the same WhatsApp chat the order came from, or share it as a link. The buyer gets a branded document on their phone within minutes of ordering, which is what makes a small business look organised and quick to deal with. And because the order, the quotation and the buyer's details all stay together, you have a record of what you quoted, to whom, and when.