The Quote Builder in KEBS is where commercial proposals are structured and priced before delivery begins. But it is more than a pricing tool. Every quote built in KEBS creates the financial baseline for the entire quote-to-cash cycle: it defines revenue, cost, and gross margin at the deal level, sets the milestone schedule that governs billing, and carries the purchase order details needed before a project can be created. This article introduces the Quote Builder, the four project types it supports, the quote structure, and the financial setup that connects an approved quote to a live project.
The Quote Tab: Your Commercial Baseline
Ensure every opportunity that moves to Closed Won has a single approved commercial baseline that finance, delivery, and the client can rely on, while preserving the ability to revise scope and pricing through a controlled change process.
The Quote tab on an opportunity is the central record of all commercial proposals for that deal. Once a quote reaches Approved status, it becomes the financial baseline for the engagement. The approved quote value flows directly into the opportunity’s Total Order Value, and the effort distribution within the quote drives the billing milestone schedule on the resulting project.
Once a quote is approved and the opportunity is Closed Won, direct edits to the quote are no longer permitted. Any revision to scope, pricing, or resource mix must go through a Change Request. The Change Request button sits at the top right of the Quote tab and opens a structured workflow that records the reason for the change, captures the revised quote version, and routes it through the same approval process as the original.
| Quote Action | When to use it |
|---|---|
| Create Quote | Use when building the initial commercial proposal for an opportunity. Opens the Quote Creation Studio with three creation paths: Build From Scratch, Import Quote, or the KAIS Powered Wizard. |
| Change Request | Use after the opportunity is Closed Won and the quote is approved. Creates a new quote version to reflect a change in scope, resource mix, or pricing, without overwriting the original approved baseline. |
| Clone (copy icon) | Use to duplicate an existing quote as the starting point for a new version. The cloned quote starts in Draft status and does not affect the original. |
Project Types: How the Quote Determines Billing Behaviour
Align the commercial structure of each engagement to the correct billing model from the outset, so that revenue recognition, milestone scheduling, and client invoicing all behave in a way that matches the contract terms agreed during the deal.
When a project is created from a Closed Won opportunity, the Project Details step of the creation form asks you to select a Project Type. This selection is the most important configuration decision in the quote-to-cash chain because it governs how KEBS calculates and schedules billing throughout the engagement.
KEBS supports four project types, each with a distinct billing and revenue recognition model:
Time and Material
The client is billed based on actual time logged and materials consumed. Revenue is recognised proportionally as hours are approved each period. Milestone values are derived from the effort distribution in the quote, but the actual billed amount adjusts to reflect real hours worked.
Fixed Bid
A predefined scope of work is delivered for a fixed price, regardless of the actual time taken. Revenue is recognised on milestone completion rather than hours. The billing schedule is set upfront in the quote and does not change unless a formal change request is raised.
Fixed Capacity
A recurring fixed fee is paid monthly for an agreed level of service or resource capacity. Common for managed services and retainer-based engagements. Revenue and billing recur at the agreed monthly rate for the contract duration.
Internal
Used for projects done within the organisation for its own purposes, such as internal tooling, R and D, or overhead activities. These projects do not generate client invoices but still track time and cost for internal reporting.
Inside a Quote: Services, Product Lines, and Financial Totals
Give pre-sales, delivery, and finance teams a common language for reading a quote so that everyone understands how the Total Order Value, Total Cost, and Gross Margin figures are constructed from individual resource lines before the deal is approved.
Every approved quote in KEBS is structured as a hierarchy. At the top level are Services, which represent the major delivery streams within the engagement (for example, Sales Force, Data Engineering, or Platform Infrastructure). Under each service sit Product Lines, which correspond to individual positions or roles contributing to that stream. The cost of each product line is looked up automatically from the rate card based on position, location, entity, and experience band.
The quote summary bar at the top of the quote builder displays the aggregate financial position:
| Metric | What it means and where it flows |
|---|---|
| Tax | The applicable tax rate on the quote. Shown as a percentage, currently 0.00% in this example. Configurable per entity and region. |
| Discount | Any discount applied to the quote total. Shown as a percentage. Discounts reduce the Revenue figure and therefore the Gross Margin. |
| Cost | The sum of all product line Total Cost values across every service in the quote. Pulled from the rate card. This is the internal cost of delivering the engagement. |
| Revenue | The Total Order Value of the quote. This figure flows up to the opportunity’s Total Order Value field and is the amount the client will be billed over the engagement period. |
| GM (Gross Margin) | Revenue minus Cost, expressed as both a dollar value and a percentage. This is the primary profitability indicator at the deal level. It appears on the quote card in the opportunity Quote tab and in pipeline reporting. |
Financial Setup: Connecting the Quote to the Project
Ensure that every project starts with a complete financial record, including the originating opportunity, the approved quote ID, the client purchase order reference, and the agreed payment terms, so that billing and finance teams have everything they need to raise and collect invoices from day one.
The final step in the project creation wizard is the Financial step. This is where the approved quote is formally tied to the project and where the purchase order and payment terms are recorded. At the top of this step is a toggle that switches the project between two financial modes: Q2C (Quote-to-Cash) and O2C (Order-to-Cash).
| Mode | What it means |
|---|---|
| Q2C (Quote-to-Cash) | The project is linked to a KEBS opportunity and an approved quote. All financial data, including revenue, cost, milestones, and billing, flows from the quote built inside KEBS. This is the standard mode for deals originated and priced within KEBS. |
| O2C (Order-to-Cash) | The project is created from an external order rather than a KEBS quote. Used when the deal was priced outside KEBS (e.g. in an external CRM or ERP) and only the delivery and billing need to be managed in KEBS. Financial data is entered manually rather than pulled from a quote. |
When Q2C mode is active, the following fields are required to complete the Financial step:
| Field | What to enter |
|---|---|
| Opportunity | The KEBS opportunity this project originates from. Pre-populated when creating a project directly from an opportunity record. |
| Opportunity Status | Displayed as a read-only badge showing the current opportunity status (e.g. Closed Won). The project cannot be saved if the linked opportunity is not in an appropriate status. |
| Quote ID | The ID of the approved quote to link to this project. This determines which quote’s effort distribution drives the billing milestone schedule. |
| Reason | The reason for project creation, typically New Project for initial engagements or Change Request for projects created to handle scope changes. |
| PO Number | The client’s purchase order number authorising this engagement. Required for invoice raising in most organisations. |
| PO Value (USD) | The total value authorised by the client’s purchase order. This should match or exceed the quote’s Total Order Value. |
| PO Date | The date on which the client’s purchase order was issued |
| Payment Terms | The agreed payment terms for this engagement (e.g. Immediate Payment, Net 30, Net 60). This setting controls due date calculations on invoices raised against this project. |
