The Cost and Margin functionality will let you specify a cost on your Items and when a Quote is generated, determine the margin per line item, and for the entire quote.
By default the cost and margin data can be viewed by all Users. Should particular Users on your account not be privy to this data, you can disable access when creating or editing a User by checking or unchecking the See Margins? as shown in the screenshot below:
The margin calculations can also be disabled at the Template level by going to the "Settings" tab and selecting the appropriate radio button based upon your requirements:
To start seeing margins on your Quotes, the first step is to modify your existing Items, and provide a cost for each. This can be done using the updated Item Importer, or Item-by-Item. For the latter approach, if we take a simple, Fixed per unit Item as an example, you can see the new cost field, beside price. You can enter your costs as a dollar amount, or percentage. Once you've entered a cost, the margins are automatically calculated and displayed to the right:
Beyond providing a cost for an Item's base price, we also offer the ability to provide a cost for your Item's Options, in a similar fashion:
If you are using any type of percentage based pricing, for either the base price or the item options, you will not see a margin estimation, as this cannot be done until the cost of the entire Quote is calculated:
When generating a Quote Preview you'll be shown the Margin calculations on a Line Item level and Quote level:
All margin related content is denoted by lighter grey text, and shows the supplied price, and the margin in dollars and percentage, below. For a simple Item without options, this is shown right below the Item:
For Items that have options, however, we show the margin breakdown for the base price and each option below their respective totals, as well as a total margin for the line item:
We show the margin grand total at the bottom of the Quote in both the totals area, and at the bottom of the Cost Breakdown. You may notice that the Cost Breakdown is now always shown on Quote preview, even if you have it turned off on the Template – this is to handle the display of any recurring margins, if applicable. If you have it disabled, it will still be hidden on the Quote PDF.
If you don't see a margin grand total at the bottom of the Quote, but a question mark icon instead, this is because one or more elements of the Quote did not have a cost supplied. This is part of the reason why we show the breakdown on a per Item and option level – you may not have all costs associated with a Quote, but may still be able to glean some information from what you've supplied. Here's an example:
Because a cost was not supplied for "Sample Item (No Cost)", Quoter couldn't calculate a margin for that line item, nor could it calculate a margin for the entire Quote.
The cost and margin data will not be shown to the customer as seen in the Quote Preview PDF:
You'll also be shown the cost and margin data on the Quotes tab under the Total column (and Recurring column if applicable) for all Quotes generated where cost and margin data is being calculated.
Quoter Tip
The cost and margin data is again viewable by all Users with the exception of Resellers. You can disable cost and margin visibility for Sales Managers and Salespeople with the User add or edit interface. See the top of this post for more information.