How to Create a Quote for a Customer: From Held Order to Paid Sale

To create a quote for a customer, ring up the items on a held order instead of taking payment, price them the way you would a real sale — including any wholesale or contract pricing tied to that customer — then print or email the held order as a fixed-price estimate. When the customer says yes, pull the same order back up, adjust it if anything changed, take a deposit if the sale calls for one, and finish the payment to turn it into a completed sale. The whole thing runs through the same point of sale you use for walk-in checkout, so nothing gets re-typed and nothing gets priced twice.

What Is a Quote in Retail, and Why Do You Need One?

A retail quote, or estimate, is a fixed, itemized price for specific products and quantities that a customer can accept later at that same price, instead of the price being decided fresh when they come back to buy. A quote is a promise: the ticket the customer eventually pays should match the one you handed them, line for line.

• A contractor wants a firm price on 40 sheets of drywall before they commit to the order
• A wholesale buyer wants to see their contract price in writing before they approve a purchase order
• A customer wants a big-ticket item — a sofa, a range, a piece of jewelry — held at today's price while they think it over
• Someone needs a repair or special order priced out before they leave a deposit

How Do You Create a Quote From the Register?

Most stores don't need a separate quoting tool — a quote is just a sale you haven't finished yet. Here's the sequence:

• 1. Start a new sale like normal and search the catalog for the items the customer wants.
• 2. Add quantities, and apply any price override or discount that should show up on the quote.
• 3. Attach the customer's profile so any pricing tied to their account — a contract price for a wholesale account, a loyalty discount, a price tier — applies automatically instead of you calculating it by hand.
• 4. Instead of taking payment, hold the order rather than completing the sale.
• 5. Give it a name or reference so you can find it again later — "Smith kitchen remodel," "40 sheets drywall."

How Do You Send a Printable Quote to a Customer?

Once the order is priced and held, it can go straight to the customer. Retailer OS can print or email a receipt for any order, and that same document works as the quote you hand over or send before checkout — the customer sees exactly what they'd pay if they said yes today.

• A clear quote should show every line item, quantity, and unit price — not just a total
• The total should match what the register would actually charge, including tax
• If a deposit will be required, say so on the quote, not as a surprise later
• If prices are time-sensitive, put an expiration date on it so nobody holds you to a stale quote

How Do You Edit a Quote Before the Customer Says Yes?

A quote almost never survives contact with the customer unchanged — they add an item, drop a quantity, or ask for a better price on one line. Because the quote is a held order, editing it is the same as editing any unfinished sale: pull it back up, add or remove items, adjust quantities, or apply a price override at the counter. Who can apply that override is a permissions question worth settling ahead of time — see POS roles and permissions for void, refund, and discount for how to set that up without leaving every register wide open.

How Do You Convert a Quote Into a Paid Sale?

• 1. Find the held order again at the register.
• 2. Make any final edits — updated quantities, a revised price, a substituted item.
• 3. Choose the tender: cash, card, gift card, store credit, or the customer's account, splitting the payment across more than one tender if needed.
• 4. Complete the sale. Inventory updates immediately, and the sale's revenue rolls into the daily sales journal that syncs to QuickBooks Online overnight.

How Do You Take a Deposit on a Quote or Special Order?

Plenty of quotes don't get paid in full the moment the customer accepts — furniture with a lead time, a jewelry repair, a special order that has to be ordered in. That's a deposit, not a discount, and it needs to be tracked as money owed, not money forgotten.

• 1. When the customer accepts, take a partial payment as one of the sale's tenders — the rest of the ticket doesn't have to be paid to record that first payment.
• 2. Put the remaining balance on the customer's account instead of forcing the whole sale to close out at once.
• 3. Track that balance in receivables aging alongside anything else they owe, and send a statement when it's due.
• 4. Collect the rest when the item arrives or the job is finished, and close out the balance.

This is exactly how deposit-heavy categories like furniture and jewelry repairs already work day to day — the deposit and the balance are the same customer, the same order, and the same account, not two disconnected transactions. If you want the fuller picture on tracking what customers owe over time, see house accounts and store credit for retail customers on account.

How Does Retailer OS Handle Quotes, Deposits, and B2B Pricing?

Retailer OS doesn't have a separate "quote" document that lives apart from the sale — a held order does the job, and that's on purpose. It means nothing about pricing, inventory, or the customer's account gets duplicated between the estimate and the finished sale:

• Held orders: price the items, attach the customer, and hold the order instead of completing it — the same register used for everyday checkout handles the quote.
• Printable or emailed receipts: send the held order to the customer as a priced estimate, the same document you'd hand over at checkout.
• Customer accounts with contract pricing and credit terms: wholesale and repeat B2B customers see their negotiated price automatically instead of a cashier calculating it by hand.
• Split payments across tenders: cash, card, gift card, store credit, or the customer's account, so a deposit-plus-balance sale is one sale, not two.
• Receivables aging and statements: the balance left on a customer's account after a deposit is tracked and billed like any other open balance.
• Roles and permissions: control who can override a price or edit a held order at pos-user-roles-and-permissions so quoting stays consistent across staff.

Card payments on the finished sale run on the store's own Stripe account, whether the customer pays by card reader in-store or a saved card on file. And because everything above lives in one system, none of it depends on a separate quoting app or a spreadsheet that has to match up with the register later — a point worth understanding if you're evaluating what a modern POS should do for an independent retailer.