This article provides a detailed overview on how to create templates for estimate and proposal options from the Housecall Pro Web App.
The Estimate Templates section in your Price book
To find your Estimate Templates select Price Book from the navigation bar at the top of your account. Once you have navigated to your Price Book you can find the Estimate Templates on the left navigation bar.
You can manage templates in the same way that you manage other Price Book resources. You can: categorize, edit, relocate, and move templates.
Creating templates from Scratch
From your Housecall Pro Homepage select the Price Book tab from the top menu bar.
Once in your Price book select Estimate templates from the left side navigation menu.
Templates cannot exist without a category, so to start creating templates, you need to have at least one template category. There will be some default categories already created for you but you can create a custom category by selecting the Add Category button in the upper right.
You can choose to keep or delete the default categories we created for you.
Once you've added a category or choose to use a default one you can add templates by clicking into the desired category, and in the upper right click on ADD TEMPLATE.
Clicking ADD TEMPLATE opens up a form that you can use to define the template’s content.
This includes the template name, Option details (Name, images, and description the customer sees when you send the estimate/proposal), and Line Items (Services & Materials).
Things to Note:
Options details are visible to your customers, however, the template name is not.
The image section of the Estimate Templates is only applicable if you use Sales Proposal V2.
Service and material line items - you can add as many service and material line items to your template as you want. You can either add line items manually in the template form, or you can pull the services and materials directly from your Price book.
Line items pulled directly from your Price book will be synchronized unless you update the line items directly in the template:
Click here to learn more about the synchronization between templates and your price book line items.
Sales Proposal (V2)Templates - Option description and cover image
Sales Proposals allow you to add images and descriptions for your service options so you can impress customers with a visual "good, better, best" sales experience (visible only if you have Sales Proposal Tool 2.0 on your Housecall Pro plan).
If you have access to Sales Proposal Tool 2.0, you can create templates for proposals! Proposals provide an optimized presentation mode of your estimates so you can create more engaging sales experiences, provide better customer service, and easily upsell larger jobs.
Sales Proposal templates and estimates templates are created in the same place, to ensure your Sales Proposal gives your customer a more engaging experience make sure to add a display image to each template.
Sales Proposal Tool V1 (1.0) Templates
If you have existing templates from Sales Proposal Tool (1.0) Your work is safe! All of your templates are moved into the new Archived templates category. Archived templates can be found by clicking the Price Book icon on the navigation bar at the top of your account, and then selecting Estimate Templates from the navigation bar on the left. From there you should see categories for the templates you already created along with a category called Archived Templates.
You may continue to edit archived templates and you can move them to a different category if desired.
You can also use this category to store the templates you're not using anymore, but don't want to permanently delete.
Creating templates from pre-existing estimate options
One of the most valuable aspects of templates is that you can quickly create them from options that you already have in your system.
If you have created estimate options in the past that you’d like to reuse for your future customers, you can do so by saving this option as a template by following the steps below:
Open the estimate option that you would like to use to create a template
Click the three-dotted icon next to the option’s name. This will open a menu with a few items to choose from:
Click Save as template from the menu:
Clicking Save as template opens a window that you can use to fill out the details required to successfully save the selected option as a template.
You need to name the template and also indicate the location in Price book (the category) you want to store your template in.
The name of the option will automatically pre-fill in the form. You can change the option name directly in this form.
Please note that changing the option name affects the template only, it will not update the name of the original option.
If you have access to Sales Proposal Tool 2.0, the Save option as template form will look slightly different. You will also be able to add the option’s description and cover image. This content will be prefilled if you the option selected has the proposal presentation mode added to it:
Pro Tip: Providing enhanced presentations of good, better, best proposal options with Sales Proposal Tool 2.0 allows you to better visually present options to customers which can upsell higher ticket jobs.
Managing templates in your Price book
You can manage templates similarly to how you manage other resources (i.e service and material line items) in your Price book.
Specifically, the following actions can be performed:
Categorizing templates - You can organize templates into categories. Each category can have an unlimited number of subcategories inside.
Additionally, categories can be updated, deleted, and reordered.
Editing and removing templates - You can edit and remove templates freely and independently from the estimate/proposal creation flow.
Reordering - Each template can be reordered within the category it’s located in.
Moving location - You can change the location (i.e. the category) of the templates.
Templates and Price book line items
When creating a template, you can create new service and material line items from scratch, but you can also pull line items directly from your Price book (similar to how you add line items from the Price book to an estimate or a job).
If you pull the line item from the Price book to your template, and you don’t overwrite that line item afterward (i.e., you don’t edit that line item after adding it to the template) the line item will be synchronized with your Price book.
Synchronization means that if you update the line item in your Price book, this change will automatically apply to all templates that have the updated line items inside.
Please consider that if you overwrite the line item after adding it (for example by changing its name or adjusting the price), the synchronization with the Price book will no longer exist.
Some other important aspects of the Price book <> estimate/proposal templates synchronization:
The synchronization works in one direction only ( i.e. changing the line item in the Price book applies to the templates, but changing the line item in a template does not synchronize back to the Price book).
Updating the line item in a template removes the synchronization.
It’s not currently possible to add new line items to the Price book from a template
Overwriting anything about the line item pulled from the Price book on a template level removes the synchronization with the exception of quantity (that’s because the quantity field is not part of the Price book line items).
How to send or present estimate and proposal options to your customers from a template
You can use the templates you have created to quickly send or present pre-built options to your customers!
Use estimate and proposal templates on Web
NEW! Send or present options from pre-built templates on the Housecall Pro mobile app