The Quote Lifecycle: Draft to Accepted

The Quote Lifecycle: Draft to Accepted

Every quote you build runs through a known sequence of states. Knowing where a quote is in that sequence tells you exactly what you can still change and what the renter has seen.

The six statuses

Draft — Saved but not sent. Only you and your team can see it. You can edit anything freely.

Sent — Emailed to the renter. They have not opened the email or the link yet. You can still edit the quote, and if you do, the renter will see the latest version when they click. A small banner at the top tells them the quote has been updated.

Viewed — The renter has opened the email or the public quote link. You will also see a timeline showing when they opened it, roughly where they were (city-level, from IP geolocation), and whether they clicked through. This is your cue to follow up if nothing has happened in a day or two — and your cue not to radically change the quote, because you will confuse them.

Accepted — The renter clicked Accept on the public quote page. The quote is now a binding offer on your side. Edits are no longer allowed; if something needs to change, you convert the quote to a reservation and make the change there.

Rejected — The renter clicked Decline or Request changes and left a reason. Rejected quotes do not disappear — they stay in your list for analysis, and you can duplicate them to try again with a revised version.

Expired — The quote passed its expiration date without being accepted. It locks automatically. The renter loses the Accept button, but they can still view what they saw. You can re-send (which creates a new quote based on the expired one) or archive.

How "Viewed" is tracked

Two signals move a quote to Viewed:

• Email open — a tiny tracking pixel in the quote email fires when the message is displayed. Some email clients block this, so absence of an open does not mean they did not see it.
• Link click — the renter clicked the quote link and landed on the public page. This is the more reliable signal.

As soon as either fires, the status flips and you get a notification.

Expired keeps the record

When a quote expires, it locks but it is not deleted. That is intentional: expired quotes are a leading indicator of pricing problems or followup gaps. Reports > Quote Analytics shows your expired rate alongside your accepted rate and the average time-to-acceptance for the quotes that did close.

Editing rules by status

• Draft, Sent — fully editable.
• Viewed — editable, but the renter sees a "quote updated" banner on their next visit. Prefer small fixes (typos, date tweaks) over big pricing changes at this stage.
• Accepted, Rejected, Expired — read-only. To change anything, convert or duplicate.

A good habit

Once a quote moves to Viewed, set a reminder for 48 hours later. If the renter has not accepted or asked questions by then, a quick personal follow-up is the single highest-converting action you can take. Most of the lift from a quoting system comes from this one habit.