Give a customer two or three priced options on one quote instead of one take-it-or-leave-it number. They pick; the quote collapses to what they chose; everything downstream — the job, the invoice, the agreement — behaves exactly as if you'd only ever quoted that one thing.
It's optional. Build a quote the way you always have and nothing changes. Options are something you add when a choice would help you win the work.
Why offer options? A single price is a yes/no question. Three prices is a *which one* question, and customers who are choosing between your options aren't choosing between you and someone else.
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QO-1: Adding Options
Open the quote wizard as usual. On the units or line-items step you'll see an options bar above your lines. Add a second option and the bar shows two tabs; add a third and you get three.
You can't have exactly one — that's just a normal quote, which is what you already had.
Each option is its own set of lines
Switch tabs and you're editing that option's lines. Options don't share anything except the customer and the terms:
| Option | Typically |
|---|---|
| Good | The minimum that does the job |
| Better | What you'd actually recommend |
| Best | Everything, at the best per-unit rate |
Name them whatever you like — those are conventions, not requirements.
Mark one recommended
One option can be flagged as recommended. It's the one that gets a badge on the customer's page, and it's the one whose price represents the quote everywhere a single number is needed.
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QO-2: What the Customer Sees
The quote PDF and the public accept page show every option, each with its own price and its own contents.
That last part matters. An early version showed three prices and three empty descriptions, because operators — reasonably — expected the line items to speak for themselves. They didn't: the customer saw three numbers with no explanation of what separated them.
Now each option lists what's in it, generated from its own line items:
Better — $240.00
3 × Standard Unit · $80.00/28-day
1 × Handwash Station · $45.00/28-day
You don't write that. It comes from the lines you built, so it's always accurate, and it renders identically in the draft preview, the PDF and the emailed quote. Add your own description on top if you want to explain the *why*; the contents list handles the *what*.
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QO-3: Choosing an Option
The customer chooses
On the public accept page each option has its own accept button. Choosing one accepts the quote at that option's price.
Or you choose for them
Deals happen on the phone. Open the quote and pick the option they agreed to — same result as if they'd clicked it.
What happens at the moment of choice
The quote collapses:
After that it is an ordinary quote for the thing they bought. Convert it to a job, an invoice, an agreement or a recurring service and none of those need to know options ever existed.
Why collapse instead of keeping all three? Because every downstream feature would otherwise need to ask "which option?" forever — and the day one of them forgot to ask, you'd invoice someone for all three. Collapsing answers the question once, permanently, at the only moment anyone actually knows the answer.
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QO-4: Numbers Before a Choice Is Made
Before the customer picks, a multi-option quote still needs to show *one* number in your pipeline, your KPIs and your quote list.
That number is the recommended option — or the first one, if you haven't marked one. It's never the sum of all three. A three-option quote showing a combined total would inflate every forecast you look at.
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QO-5: Converting an Un-Chosen Quote
If you try to convert a multi-option quote to a job or invoice before an option has been chosen, PortaPro stops you and says so.
That's not an obstacle, it's the point — converting without a choice would mean silently guessing which option the customer wanted. Pick the option first (from the quote), then convert.
Pulling a quote's items into a job, invoice or agreement wizard works the same way: you'll get the recommended option's items, not all of them.
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QO-6: Works With Both Kinds of Quote
Options work on recurring quotes (long-term rental, rate-card service) and one-off quotes (an event weekend) — the same wizard, the same options bar. Nothing about options changes how acceptance, activation or deposits behave; the quote just knows which set of lines won.
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QO-7: Common Questions
Can I add options to a quote I already sent?
Revise it. The revision is where you restructure; the customer sees the new version.
Can I have four options?
Two or three. Beyond that customers stop comparing and start deferring.
What if the customer wants a mix of two options?
Revise the quote into what they actually want. Options are for presenting choices, not for assembling one.
Does the customer see the option I marked recommended?
Yes — it carries a badge. That's what the flag is for.
What happens to the options after they pick?
The full offer is snapshotted on the quote before the others are removed, so what you presented is recoverable even though the working quote is now single-option.
Do options change how deposits work?
No. Deposits behave as they always do, against the chosen option's total.