Proposal Statuses, Acceptance and the Price Lock Documentation

A proposal's status says where the deal stands with the client, and it decides two things: whether the proposal counts toward the event's Budgeted and Revenue totals, and whether its pricing can still be edited.

Statuses

Status	Meaning	Counts toward budget and revenue	Pricing editable
Draft	Being built. Every new proposal and change order starts here.	No	Yes
Sent	Shared with the client and waiting on an answer.	No	Yes
Accepted	The client agreed. Sets the Accepted date.	Yes	No
Paid	Every invoice billing the proposal is settled. Set automatically.	Yes	No
Rejected	The client declined.	No	Yes
Canceled	An accepted deal that was called off.	No	No

A proposal keeps counting toward the budget once it is Paid: collecting the money does not take the deal out of the budget. Canceled proposals never count.

On the Proposals list, two badges can sit beside the status. Invoiced means the proposal is on at least one invoice. Partially paid means some of its invoices are settled and some are not. Neither is a status.

Allowed Status Changes

flowchart LR
    D["Draft"] --> S["Sent"]
    S --> D
    S --> A["Accepted"]
    A --> S
    A --> C["Canceled"]
    C --> A
    A -.->|"Invoices settled"| P["Paid"]
    P --> A
    D --> R["Rejected"]
    S --> R
    R --> D

From	Can move to
Draft	Sent, Rejected
Sent	Draft, Accepted, Rejected
Accepted	Sent, Canceled
Paid	Accepted
Rejected	Draft
Canceled	Accepted

A Draft cannot be accepted directly. Acceptance means the client saw the proposal, so it goes through Sent first. Moving a Paid proposal back to Sent takes two steps, through Accepted, so unwinding a settled deal is always a deliberate choice.

Change a Proposal's Status

Open the proposal

Open it from Resourcing, then Proposals.

Use the status button

In the left panel, select the status button to see the statuses the proposal can move to, and choose one. The arrow beside it moves the proposal one step along Draft, Sent and Accepted.

Reject or cancel

To mark a proposal Rejected or Canceled, you can also use Mark rejected or Cancel proposal in the proposal's actions menu in the top bar.

BackOps asks you to confirm two moves. Accepting a proposal that has resource-backed lines priced at $0 warns you that those lines will be locked at $0. Moving an accepted proposal back to Sent after money has been collected warns you that reducing it below what was paid will over-collect, since credits and refunds are not available yet.

What Accepting Locks

Accepting a proposal freezes the priced document: the name, client and terms, every line and group, and every adjustment column. Lines cannot be added from procurement or imported. The lock stays on while the proposal is Accepted, Paid or Canceled.

The work of running the show stays open whatever the status:

Internal notes on the proposal.
The Budget tab: assigning orders and needs to lines, re-pointing and unassigning them.
Invoices and payments.

To change the price of an accepted proposal, either bill the new scope on a change order, or move the proposal back to Sent, edit it, and accept it again.

Moving an Accepted Proposal Back to Sent

Change orders only add scope. When a client cuts scope, move the proposal from Accepted back to Sent, reduce it, and accept it again. While it is out of Accepted, it drops out of the event's budget and revenue, and its Accepted date is cleared; accepting again stamps a new one.

Invoices and payments are records of what happened, so a status change never alters them. If you un-accept a proposal that was already billed, the Over-billed figure on the Proposals and Invoices tabs shows the billed amount that no longer has revenue behind it. If you reduce it below what the client already paid, Over-collected shows the difference. Outstanding never goes below zero, so these two figures are where an overpayment shows.

How Paid Is Set

You never set Paid by hand. An Accepted proposal moves to Paid on its own once it is on at least one invoice and every invoice that bills it is settled. An invoice is settled when the payments recorded against it reach its total.

The reverse is automatic too. If a payment is deleted or reduced, an invoice amount goes up, a new invoice bills the proposal, or a settling invoice is deleted, a Paid proposal goes back to Accepted. A deposit invoice settled while a proposal is still Sent does not make it Paid: cash only moves Accepted and Paid proposals.

Change Orders

Bill new scope against an accepted proposal.

Invoices and Payments

Bill proposals and record what the client pays.