Creating a proposal and booking a client is probably one of the most important things you'll do in ShootQ. To speed up the process, you can create defaults for proposal settings and save them in the form of a template. When creating a proposal, you can select your proposal template and the settings will automatically apply to the proposal. You won't have to create these settings every time you book a job.

The template can save defaults for your proposal's payment method, payment schedule, discounts, taxes, and expiration date.

To create a template, navigate to Settings > Payments, Invoices, & Taxes > Proposal Settings Templates and click the "plus" icon.

First, give your template a name. You can also set it as your default template so that every time you book a job, this template (and its settings) will automatically load. 

Then configure the settings in the template.
​

This is where you set the payment method. There are two choices. If you select "Collect Manually" your client will need to contact you to make a payment. They will see a message on their invoices with your contact information so they can mail a check, cash, or some other payment method. It will then be up to you to mark the invoice paid when you receive a payment.

If you have a merchant account integrated into ShootQ, you'll see the merchant listed. Selecting it will allow your clients to pay via credit card on an invoice. The merchant will not only charge the client, but it will also mark the ShootQ invoice as paid for you. Furthermore, you also give the client a choice to pay by check as well. On an invoice, the client would see both the credit card and check options.

Next, select one of your payment schedules (this article will demonstrate how to create a payment schedule). If necessary, you can edit the selected schedule.

You can add a discount into a template, too. Just select one of your templates (this article will show you how to create a discount template). Just like payment schedules, you can edit your discount templates.

If necessary, you can apply a tax rate to your proposal's invoices (this article will explain how to create a tax template). Your templates will be listed and you can View them to see their configuration. Tax Templates cannot be modified in this section. To edit them, navigate to the Settings > Payments, Invoices, and Taxes.

The expiration date is when the proposal is no longer available to the client. Proposals that are expired can always be reactivated and re-sent to a client. You can also have your proposals never expire.

Note: In general, you probably don't want to save a specific expiration date in your proposal template. Usually you would want it to expire a number of days after the proposal is sent (or have it never expire).

You may want to create more than one proposal template if you have a variety of booking configurations. For example, your portraits might have a different payment schedule than your weddings in which case you would create two different proposal templates. 

You can always duplicate, archive, or edit a template in the Settings section. Archived templates can be restored to the active list or they can be completely deleted.

When creating a proposal, you can select a proposal template from the drop down menu and the configuration in that template will apply to the proposal you are creating. You have the further option of editing these settings if necessary.

Instead of creating custom settings for every client, proposal templates will save you time by applying default settings.