The Quotes sub-tab is where we manage our quotes or raw costs (pricing excluding any margin). You will find all you need here to add pricing, edit existing pricing, add a margin for charge-up jobs, add a scope of works for clients or contractors, and much more. 



Create a Quote from a Supplier’s CSV File

 

Many of our clients (and our client's suppliers) use a QS service or excel spreadsheets to formulate their pricing - using RAVE's CSV file upload process you can upload one, or more, prices into your job quickly and easily.

To manually load a supplier's CSV 'quote' File into RAVE:

  1. Click on Quotes sub-tab
  2. From the Quotes page, find the 'Add a Quote' button to the top right, click on the arrow drop down, and select the 'Load from CSV File' option

     
     
  3. A 'Load from CSV File' pop up will display, with a example CSV file for you to download and view 
    - check the suppliers CSV file matches the sample file for both column names and data - and if not make the necessary changes to the supplier's file

    NOTE: The fields in the CSV sample file are set to/must match the information in Rave:
    • The Quote Name - is the reference number or name of the quote.  This field is how you easily tell what type of products are inside this quote or price. You can either use the supplier or contractor's quote reference or use something easily identifiable like 'Roof' or 'Building Labor' 
    • The Company Name field must exactly match the name you have stored in Rave under the Contractor or Supplier company name field. If you are using Xero as well you must ensure that Rave and Xero also match exactly i.e. if the Company Name is 'Rave Build Management Limited' you must type the entire name in for it to match.  If you are unsure who is supplying you with this item you can leave the company name field blank. RAVE will autofill it with your company name as a temporary placeholder and you can go and edit it later.
    • The Category - is chosen from your list of pre-populated categories. You can have multiple line items in a quote with different categories, or all line items with the same category.
    • Product Code - is only used for internal reference, this is the sku/item code your supplier uses. This doesn’t send to Xero or go anywhere other than in RAVE.
    • The (item) Description can be a short name or as long as you need. Don’t use this field for the scope of works or inclusions /exclusions as these can get too long.
    • The Unit of Measurement can be whatever you chose to use. Rave does have a list of prepopulated ones such as each, sum, hours, day, week etc
    • The Qty can be a full number or a part of a number i.e. 1.0, 1.5, 1.25, 0.45, etc
    • Price is your cost price EXCLUDING GST and EXCLUDING MARGIN/MARKUP
    • The Tax Rate is either 15 (% GST) or 0 (% GST) 
    • The Markup is the % you wish to mark this item up by. If you prefer an overall job profit then you can leave this field blank and handle markup and margin on the estimate page.
    • The Cost Centre field is your Xero chart of account code or whatever accounting system you use. It’s the account code only - no wording is required.

      MORE NOTES: 
      - Once you have checked/completed each field you need to ensure that there is only 1 quote name per supplier - you cannot have two different companies using the same quote name.
      An example might be 'building materials' - you have some from ITM and some from Carters. You can't name both of the quote name fields 'Building Materials' - though you could say “Building Materials ITM” and “Building Materials Carters”
      - You can not have a 0 (zero) Qty, all items must have a qty value greater than 0.  You can however have a quantity of 1 and a price of $0.00.

  4. Once the supplier's CSV file is good to go, you need to upload it into RAVE - via the Quotes sub-tab/ 'Add a Quote' button dropdown/'Load from CSV File' 
  5. A new pop-up will appear, showing that the upload went through 100%, otherwise, any errors that need fixing will be displayed in Orange and Red.

    NOTE: 
    An orange error lets you know that there is missing data, though this will not stop the CSV file from loading. Hovering over any of the caution signs will detail what the warning is for. A few examples of orange errors include - missing Category, Cost Centre, or Company Name. 

    A red error will prevent an upload from continuing.  Examples of red errors include - the one Quote Name shared across 2 or more contractors/suppliers, invalid formatting of the columns with emojis or icons that cannot be read, and a full stop in the middle of a pricing column such as 20.00.00.



  6. Once you have rectified the red errors you can retry the 'Load from CSV File' import
  7. You will now see all of the uploaded quotes on the quotes page - which you can now edit as required 
    i.e. change suppliers, pricing, add a scope of works, etc. You can also approve the prices, and add them to the Estimate or just leave as pending while you work on them.