In your account, open the saved record and choose Preview before sending. Customer page shows the customer-facing page, PDF shows the printable document, and Email shows its subject, body, and SMS text. Drafts work too. Preview sends nothing and does not mark the record viewed; acceptance, signing, and payment actions are disabled. Save form edits first.
Bids are how you get work. Build a proposal, send it to the customer, and when they accept, convert it straight to a job. The deposit invoice auto-generates on acceptance, so you don’t have to chase the deposit step manually. Every screen in this article is live and clickable: each lesson below walks you through the real bid UI, step by step, with simulated data.
Terms & Notes
The Terms & Notes card holds two separate fields, and each shows up in different places:
- Customer Message: a short note to this specific customer (payment expectations, scheduling caveats, anything you want them to read before the line items). It appears in the emailed bid’s email body, in the attached PDF, and on the online bid page.
- Terms & Conditions: your standard terms. It appears in the emailed bid’s email body and in the attached PDF. It also appears on the online bid page for the default Conduit template; a customized document template may present terms only in the PDF instead.
Both are hidden automatically wherever they’re blank, and both respect your document template’s section toggles if you’ve customized one for bids.
Internal notes in the same card are for your team only: they show on the bid’s page in Conduit and carry over to the job when you convert the bid, but never appear on the customer’s bid page, PDF or email.
Propose a schedule
Next to Valid Until, choose Schedule: None, Specific day, or Window. For a window, enter its first and last day. This is separate from when the bid expires. The customer sees the proposed day or window on the bid page, PDF, and email.
When you convert an accepted bid to a job, Confirm schedule lets you choose a day and edit the start time. A proposed day starts filled in; a window limits the day picker to that range. Times use your company timezone and default to 8:00 AM. Choose Schedule later to create the job without a date. Progressive bids ask you to select the work first, then confirm its schedule.
Offering options (Good / Better / Best)
You can give the customer a choice on one bid instead of sending three. In Items & Pricing, add a section for each option (say “40 gallon tank”, “50 gallon tank”, “Tankless”), put each option’s line items in its section with Add item to this section or by dragging them under its header, then use Make this an option on each section and give them the same group name (for example “Water heater”). Tick Recommended on the one you would pick; it becomes the option included in the total you send. A bid can hold more than one group, such as a separate yes/no “Recirculation pump” group.
On the public bid the customer sees each group as a set of cards with a Recommended badge, taps the one they want, and watches the total, tax, and deposit update. When they accept, their choice is saved with the acceptance and cannot be changed afterwards. The deposit invoice, the job, and any invoices only carry the chosen option’s line items. The PDF lists every option with the recommended one marked and a note to choose online, and the email summary shows the recommended selection.
{{callout type=”warning”}}
Once a bid is accepted you can convert it to a job without re-typing anything. For billing in draws, retention, and close-out, see Progressive Billing and Retention. Your company’s logo and mission statement shown to the customer come from Company Settings; set them up once and they show on every bid, PDF, and invoice payment page automatically.
That’s bids. Next: Plans and Takeoff for the visual measurement tools.