Quote orders

Not every order on your storefront is a standard purchase. B2B customers often need a quote first — a formal price breakdown they can share internally for approval before placing the order. Vendure supports this with a quote-specific flag on orders.

What makes an order a quote

A quote order is just a standard order with one extra piece of information: an internal isQuotation flag (plus a quoteNumber for reference). Everything else — items, prices, customer details — is the same.

This means that from the customer's perspective, building a quote is the same flow as checking out. They add items to a basket, enter their details, and "submit" — but instead of paying, they get a quote confirmation.

Spotting a quote order in the admin

1. In Sales → Orders, look at the filter options.
2. There's a filter (or custom field) for Is Quotation — tick it to show only quote orders.
3. Quote orders will usually have a quote number (quoteNumber custom field) in addition to the standard order code.

You can also identify a quote because:

• The order won't have a completed payment.
• The order's state usually sits at a pre-payment stage.

What you can do with a quote

A quote isn't a committed sale, so you can do things with it that you wouldn't normally do with an order in payment:

• Adjust pricing manually — apply a one-off discount by editing the order or attaching a promotion (see Managing promotions — coming soon).
• Edit line items — add or remove products without needing a formal order amendment process.
• Extend validity — quotes often expire after a set period. If a customer comes back later, you can refresh the prices rather than leaving them with a stale quote.

Converting a quote to an order

When the customer is ready to buy from their quote, the process depends on how your tenant is set up:

• Self-service — the customer returns to their account, opens the quote, and clicks Proceed to payment. They're taken into the standard checkout flow with the items and prices from the quote preserved.
• Assisted — you (ops/sales) open the quote in the admin, transition it through to payment, and the customer gets a payment link by email.

If you're not sure which mode your storefront uses, check with your Flowtech account manager before telling the customer how to proceed.

Common questions

A customer says their quote doesn't show up in their account

Check:

1. Are they logged in to the same account they used when they requested the quote? Customers sometimes sign up a second time with a different email.
2. Is the quote still open? If it's been sitting for a long time and expired, it might be hidden from their account view.
3. Was the quote raised by someone else on their company account? Quotes are typically visible to all users on the same company — but your setup may vary.

A quote is too old — can I just close it?

Yes. Open the order, transition it to Cancelled. The customer sees it as closed and can start a new quote if they still want to buy. Don't delete old quotes — they're useful for internal records and tracking what customers have been interested in.

The quote has the wrong customer assigned

This happens when a salesperson raises a quote on behalf of a customer and enters the wrong email. Edit the customer association on the order if your permissions allow, or ask an admin to do it. Check that the customer on the corrected quote is on the right company account too.

What's not built

• There is no automatic expiry on quotes. They don't auto-cancel after N days. If you want this, you'll need to review and cancel stale quotes manually, or ask about adding automated expiry.
• There is no "copy quote to another customer" feature. If you want to offer the same deal to a different customer, copy the line items across manually.

Raise either of these with your Flowtech account manager if they'd save your team meaningful time.