FreshBooks Announces New Proposals Feature

Create custom client proposals with FreshBooks

FreshBooks, one of the best accounting tools for small business, recently announced an exciting and useful new feature: Proposals. Agencies and independent professional services providers have long been able to create estimates inside FreshBooks, but the new proposals functionality takes that a crucial step further.

The new proposals feature can potentially help FreshBooks users win more business. The estimates functionality alone enabled you to list the tasks you’d be completing or services you provide along with associated costs. Those are certainly important elements for a prospective new client to understand, but proposals offer deeper functionality to help you stand out.

With proposals, you can add information like:

  • Objective: What is the client’s current situation? What are they trying to achieve (that you will help them with)?
  • Approach: How are you thinking about their situation? How will you solve it? This shows you aren’t just listening to their problems, but also diagnosing solutions. It enables you to explain the “why” for your service estimates.
  • Timeline: How long is the engagement? Are there phases? What type of results can be measured at each stage? This gives the prospective client confidence they are signing up for more than just a laundry list of services, and helps set expectations.

Disclosure

How to Create a Proposal in FreshBooks

FreshBooks - select ProposalFrom the main screen, click Estimates. Click the Create New button and select Proposals.

This will open a New Proposal screen as shown below.

Note the sections include the ability to add the information noted above (objective / overview, work scope / approach, and timeline) as well as additional notes about the project or engagement and important terms.

New Proposal screen in Freshbooks

Once you’ve added your information, you can customize the appearance of your proposal by selecting between different templates (Simple or Modern), fonts, and customizing the color scheme to reflect your branding.

When you’re done, just save it, preview it, and send your FreshBooks Proposal to your client for approval! Clients can accept with a single click.

Agencies, contractors, and independent consultants often create proposals using Microsoft Word, Excel, or other tools. Creating them inside FreshBooks instead keeps all of your proposals in one place, along with your other business financial documents.

You can easily convert proposals to invoices, and duplicate existing proposals as the basis for creating new ones.

Set your service offerings apart and win more business! FreshBooks Proposals are available now to users at the Plus ($25 per month) or Premium ($50 per month) plan levels.

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