Proposals

A proposal is a Client Agreement — the priced record you send a client to review and accept. It pulls its line items straight from the project budget, so the numbers always match what you've planned.

Create a proposal

1. From Records, click Create Record.
2. Pick the Project, then choose Proposal under Client Agreements.
3. The builder opens with your company branding and the project details already filled in.

Add line items from the budget

Line items on a proposal can only come from the project budget — that keeps your sent price tied to your plan.

1. In the builder, click Add items.
2. Pick the budget lines and sections you want to include.
3. Click Apply. They appear in the document with quantities, unit prices, and totals. Save the record to keep the imported rows.

Set the expiry with Due in [days] in the document header. The count starts from today and saves a fixed date; recipients see the exact Valid Until date. The record number appears without an additional Client Agreement No. caption.

Empty description and footer fields show italic Description... and Footer... hints. These disappear as you type and are omitted from the downloaded record; your entered text prints without extra Description or Footer headings.

Add recipients

1. In the right side panel, find the Recipients section.
2. Type a name or email into Add a client... and pick a match, or click Add new client to create the contact on the spot.
3. Add the clients who need to receive it — up to ten recipients, with up to eight requiring signatures.
4. Flip the Signature? toggle on any recipient who has to sign.

Send it

1. Click Send in the side panel.
2. If you haven't added a recipient yet, Foreman jumps you to the Recipients box first.
3. The Send window opens, showing who it's going to (with a Signature tag on anyone who must sign). Add an optional Message.
4. Click Send in the window. Each client gets an email link to view the proposal in their portal.

How status moves

Once sent, the proposal tracks itself:

1. Sent — the client has been emailed.
2. Viewed — the client has opened it.
3. Accepted — all required signatures are complete, or you recorded acceptance with Mark Accepted. Acceptance is what writes the numbers onto the budget: each included linked line gets its Approved Price and its Budgeted Cost, both frozen from the snapshot the client saw.
4. Declined — the client declined; you're notified.

If you required signatures from your recipients, the proposal sits at Pending (awaiting signatures) until everyone who needs to sign has signed — see Contracts & eSignatures.

To remove the payment schedule from a draft, turn off Show payment schedule on the document and save the agreement. This also removes its scheduled payment milestones. Click Add Scheduled Invoice to start a new schedule.

New scheduled payments preselect the first available invoice template. You can change it in the payment's template dropdown; existing selections stay as chosen.

Accept it yourself

Clients don't always accept in the portal — plenty sign a paper copy or just say yes on the phone. Open the sent agreement and use Mark Accepted in the side panel to record that acceptance yourself.

It writes Approved Price and Budgeted Cost onto the included budget lines and drafts any payment-schedule invoices. Contract-dependent figures can remain blank until acceptance; this does not mean every Costing, Invoicing or Profit column must be blank.

After you send

Sending finalizes the proposal. Reopen it from Records and you'll see the rendered PDF instead of the editor — the line items, dates, and recipients are locked in. The side panel keeps:

1. Recipients — each row shows its current status, such as Pending, Viewed, Signed or Accepted, with an X to cancel a request that has not been signed, accepted, declined or canceled.
2. Activity — the send, view, and feedback events, plus a link to preview exactly what each client received.
3. Download PDF — grab the finalized document any time.