Agency Quotation

This insurance agency quotation template is created based on c3004 insurance agency invoice template. While Invoice Manager for Excel is basically designed for invoicing, it is able to handle any forms that adhere to the design rules.

In the How To Create Invoice Template we describe the rules to follow to make sure the template or form with Invoice Manager for Excel, which is our Excel invoicing software program. First of all, a template works with Invoice Manager for Excel contains a hidden Excel sheet that details the connection with the back end Access (or Microsoft SQL Server) database, template version, and other specifications.

This means that, in order to make it work with Invoice Manager for Excel, you cannot create a template from scratch. You have to copy an existing template, which has the form layout similar to the design you want to create. In this quotation sample, we copy c3004 insurance agency invoice template to create the agency quotation template.

In fact it is fairly easy to create the quotation template from the invoice template. All we need to do is to change the big title from "INVOICE" to "QUOTATION", and then move out the "Paid" and "Total Due" cells. Visit How To Create Invoice Template to find out the details.

Both this template and c3004 agency invoice template are based on the C3-004 originally published on office-kit.com. So we revisited the document from office-kit.com to help you get a better understanding.

A car insurance agency needs an invoicing program to replace their receipts as well as generating reports for earnings. The invoicing program should separate earnings from the money that they pay to the companies that they work for. For example, a customer comes to buy a new insurance. The insurance agency looks for a company and charge the customer what the company asks for (56.00) plus the broker fee (10.00). The total invoice would say 66.00. Yet the earning and lost are included in the same invoice, but not visible to the customer. This template for car insurance agency is built with this situation in mind.

Below we'll look at how to create this template (C3-004) based on the standard invoice template shipped with Invoice Manager for Excel.

Moving cells and adjusting the layout of the form

The invoices for insurance agency don't require the "Ship To" fields, and many other fields in the default template, should be moved to better meet the business requirements of an insurance agency.

The most powerful and flexible feature provided by Microsoft Excel, and supported by Invoice Manager for Excel, is that you can move cells/controls to quickly get a new invoice form based on an existing form you already have. Moving a cell means to assign a new cell (the target cell) all the properties of the source cell, including fonts, formats, formulas, names, borders, lock/unlock properties, etc., and once the moving operation is done, clear all the properties on the source cell.

To move a cell or control in the invoice template, follow the steps below.

1. By default the invoice template is protected. This prevents end-users from breaking the form accidently. To remove the protection before modifying the template, in Excel 2003 click menu command Tools -> Protection -> Unprotect Sheet; or if you are running Excel 2007 or higher versions, click Review tab -> Changes group -> Unprotect Sheet. For detailed instructions, see Customizing Invoice Template - Protection.
2. Click the cell or control to select it; or if you want to move a group of cells, drag your mouse to select all the cells; or if the cells/controls to move are not adjacent, push the CTRL key on your keyboard and click the cells/controls one by one.
3. Now move the selected cell / cells / control to the new location.
4. Exit design mode.
5. Save the template.

Custom fields used by the template

This template requires an additional column, BrokerFee, which is not printed or included in the extracted version, but saved to database. You enter "Line Total" and BrokerFee manually, and Cost, which is the money that the agency pays to the companies that the agency works for, is calculated automatically.

"Total BrokerFee" is a custom field that calculates the sum of all the BrokerFee on the form ( invoice, receipt or quotation). This field can be added to Sales Report etc.

For each product, you can set a default broker fee, which is loaded when you choose the product (insurance) by clicking the select-a-product icon button. You can also enter a Price as a reference for manually entering Line Total.

The link between the backend database and the front end Excel form is created by using names. For example, a database field named TotalBrokerFee should be named oknTotalBrokerFee on the Excel form, where "okn" is a prefix, which must be present for all the cell names recognized by Invoice Manager for Excel, and "TotalBrokerFee" is just the database field name. For new columns, you add a field, such as BrokerFee to the Invoice Body (InvBdy) database table, and then name the cells on the body part of the invoice form oknBrokderFee_1, oknBrokderFee_2, oknBrokerFee_3, and so on.