RAVE’s financial management system is designed to help you manage all the financial aspects of your projects including budgeting, bills, and invoices with ease.
Accessing your Project’s Budget Workflows
You can access your Project’s financial workflows from either the Financial button, or the Site|Build button's Build Project list, clicking on the project’s job number, and finally the Budget sub-tab.
This will display the project’s Financial Management Systems workflows – all laid out in an easy and logical order, starting with:
- Creating a preliminary budget
- Sending your quote and tender requests out
- Managing your quotes and tenders received in
- Building up a full client estimate or proposal
- Creating purchase orders - if you use them
- Receiving bills in
- And sending client invoices out
Plus a suite of powerful, real-time, project reports including
- Project Back Costing Reports
- Profitability Reports - displaying expected and real-time gross profit reports
- Cost Center Report - to see if you are over or under budget by your cost centers (chart of accounts)
- Charge Up Report
- Transaction Report
Full training tutorials and FAQ walkthroughs of each workflow will soon be available via our RAVE Help portal, and we'll dive deeper into the Preliminary Budget workflow in a few moments. But first, if you ever need to go back to the project's non-financial sub-tabs, you can do so by clicking on the overview sub-tab to the very left of the screen.
The Quote Request sub-tab
This is where you go to request quotes and tender submissions from your suppliers and contractors.
Creating a Quote Request
To create a new Quote Request:
- We open the Quote Requests sub-tab;
- Then click the ‘Add Quote Request’ button to the top right of this screen
- This will take you to the ‘Add a Quote Request' form to complete;
- Firstly, select your Supplier (or a Contractor with a RAVE login already added to the People’s tab of this project) from the ‘Supplier/Contractor’ dropdown
- Add the date you need the quote back by via the ‘Date Required’ dropdown
- Select the category that this quote is meant to sit under via the ‘Category’ dropdown
- And the person they need to contact with any queries for the quote request, via the ‘Site Contact’ dropdown i.e. the project manager, the client or a tenant
- once the ‘Site Contact’ is selected their contact name and email address, if loaded, will be added in - Your name will automatically be added to the 'Created By' field i.e. a reply to your Quote Request email will default to you (if you have a valid notification email set-up), otherwise it will reply to your branch's 'reply to' financial email
- If your Supplier (or Contractor) has been given access to the project, you’ll have the ability to tick the ‘Include a link to the project’s Plans and Specs folder’
- You can also attach files (documents, photos etc.) to include with your quote request by clicking on the ‘Attachments’ cloud icon
- this will open your computers file browser, allowing you to select the relevant document(s) to attach i.e. if you were sending this quote request to a builder (who is loaded into your system as a ‘Supplier’ without a RAVE login to view the project details) you could attach the set of plans for them to view. - You have the ability to type in a message/instructions via the messages section with a number of formatting options
- And, if this quote request message is pretty standard for your quote requests, you can save this as a template via the ‘Save as Template’ button to the lower right
- Or, if you have already saved a message template, you can load it for this quote, by clicking on the ‘Load message from Template’ button to the lower left - Once you’ve filled in all the necessary fields, click the ‘Send’ button to forward your quote request out
NOTE: If you need to stop partway through your quote request, just click on the ‘Save as Pending’ button to the bottom left of the screen to save your work and come back later.
‘Suppliers’ vs ‘Contractor’ in RAVE's FMS
With RAVE’s Financial Management System, the term ‘Supplier’ refers to companies that provide products and materials only, and do not need to come on-site. These companies do not require a RAVE login to access your project details and schedule like ‘Contractor’ do. Therefore, the steps for sending a quote request to a ‘Supplier’ is the same as a ‘Contractor’ - except the ‘Include a link to the project’s Plans and Specs folder’ tick box is greyed out (Suppliers do not have a RAVE login to access these details), and you would need to attach the plans, specs and any other necessary information for your ‘Supplier’ to view and quote from instead.
Creating a Quote Request Message Template
You can easily create message templates in RAVE to streamline your quoting process, with one template to load up for a ‘Supplier’ quote request, and another template to load up for a ‘Contractor’ quote request i.e. the ‘Supplier’ message template might say, “I’ve attached the plans & specs for you to quote on, please reply/email your pricing back to me as soon as possible” etc., while a ‘Contractor’ message template might say “I’ve given you access to the project’s ‘Plans & Specs’ folder for you to quote on, please reply/email your pricing back to me as soon as possible”
Creating a new Quote Request Message Template
To create a new Quote Request Message Template:
- We open the ‘Quote Requests’ sub-tab
- Then click the ‘Add Quote Request’ button to the top right of this screen
- This will take you to the ‘Add a Quote Request’ form to complete; - Scroll down to the ‘Messages’ section and type in your message – you could also copy and paste a message from a previous quote request email
- Use the formatting buttons as required to get your message looking right
- Once your quote request message is ready, you can save this as a template via the ‘Save as Template’ button to lower right
- Give the template a name i.e. ‘Supplier quote request message template’ and click SAVE
Loading an existing Quote Request Message Template
To load an existing Quote Request Message Template:
- We again, open the ‘Quote Requests’ sub-tab;
- Then click the ‘Add Quote Request’ button to the top right of this screen
- Scroll down to the ‘Messages’ section and click the ‘Load message from Template’ button to the upper left of the messages section
- Select the saved quote request message template you want to use, and click the ‘Load’ button.
- You can edit the copy, and again use the formatting as required to get your message looking right
Supplier and Contractor Quote Request Notifications
As soon as the quote request is sent, the Supplier or Contractor will be notified via email. If the quote request has any attachments, these will be sent with the email also. If the Contractor opens the quote request in RAVE, the Quote Request ‘Status’ will change from ‘Pending’ to ‘Viewed’.
Once a Contractor has priced up their quote, and sent it back to you via RAVE, the Quote Request ‘Status’ will change from “Viewed” to “Quoted”.
Suppliers (who do not have a RAVE login) can easily return their quote to you, by replying to your email* and attaching their submission to it. Allowing you to upload their quote to RAVE on their behalf.
Once the quote request has been sent, you have a few options via the 3 dot action dropdown, you can;
- ‘Resend the quote request’ back to the supplier i.e. they deleted the quote request or missed receiving it the first time
- Create/load the quote using the ‘Copy to Quote’ option i.e. you’ve received the quote, and you now want to load it manually into your system
- ‘Close the quote request’ at any time i.e. you don’t need a quote anymore
NOTE: A reply to your Quote Request email will default to you (if you have a valid notification email set-up), otherwise it will reply to your branch's 'reply to' financial email.
> Next up is our Financial Management System 'Quotes' sub-tab article