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Quote-to-Order Conversion

What is Quote-to-Order Conversion?

Quote-to-order conversion transforms an accepted customer quote into a bookable order with a single click, preserving all the pricing, accessorials, shipment details, and terms from the quote. When a customer accepts your quote (via email, phone call, or formal purchase order), you don't re-enter all the information into a new order form. You open the quote in TMS.ai, click "Convert to Order," and the system creates an order pre-filled with the customer rate, origin, destination, pickup and delivery dates, commodity details, and all the accessorials and terms you quoted. This eliminates transcription between quoting and booking, prevents pricing errors, and speeds up the handoff from sales to operations.

This seamless conversion matters most in high-volume operations where sales writes dozens of quotes daily. Every minute spent re-entering quote information into orders is wasted time that doesn't add value. More importantly, manual re-entry creates opportunities for errors—quoting $2,400 then accidentally booking the order at $2,200, or forgetting to include the liftgate charge that was in the quote. Quote-to-order conversion eliminates these handoff problems.

How Quote-to-Order Conversion works:

  1. Receive customer acceptance of your quote. The customer notifies you via email, phone, or their system that they accept the quote you provided. They may reference your quote number or simply confirm they want to book the shipment.
  2. Locate the quote in your Quotes board. Navigate to the Quotes module and search for the specific quote by quote number, customer name, or date range. Open the accepted quote to view all its details.
  3. Verify the quote details match the customer's expectations. Before converting, confirm the quote still reflects what the customer expects: correct pickup and delivery dates, right origin and destination, accurate rates, all required accessorials included. If anything has changed since you quoted, update the quote first.
  4. Click "Convert to Order" in the quote interface. The conversion button appears at the top of the quote view. When clicked, it triggers the system to create a new order using all the quote information.
  5. TMS.ai creates a draft order with all quote details pre-filled. The system generates a new order with the customer, origin, destination, pickup date, delivery date, commodity description, weight, equipment type, customer rate, and all accessorials copied directly from the quote. The order links back to the original quote for reference.
  6. Review the converted order for completeness. Open the newly created order and verify all information transferred correctly. Check that the customer rate matches what you quoted, all accessorials appear as line items, and shipment details are accurate and complete.
  7. Add operational details not included in the quote. The quote focuses on customer-facing information (what they're paying, what service they're getting). The order needs operational details like carrier assignment, driver assignment, and internal reference numbers. Add these details to prepare the order for dispatch.
  8. Assign a carrier or driver to cover the load. Use the carrier tariff lookup to find carrier costs and select which carrier will move the freight. The system calculates margin between the quoted customer rate and the carrier cost you're selecting.
  9. Generate shipping documents from the order. With the order fully populated from the quote and carrier assigned, generate the BOL and rate confirmation. These documents include all the details that originated in the quote and carried through to the operational order.
  10. Mark the quote as "Converted" in the system. The quote status automatically updates to show it has been converted to an order, preventing duplicate conversion. The quote remains in the system for reference and audit purposes, linked to the order it created.

What it means for you:

The handoff from sales to operations becomes frictionless. When a customer accepts a quote at 2 PM, your operations team can have the load tendered to a carrier by 2:15 PM because they're not waiting for someone to re-enter all the quote details into an order. Speed from quote acceptance to load coverage improves your service level and utilization.

Pricing accuracy increases because the rate your sales rep quoted is exactly the rate that appears on the order and later on the invoice. There's no game of telephone where the quote says $2,400, dispatch books it thinking the customer agreed to $2,600, and accounting invoices based on what's in the order. The number flows consistently through the entire process because it only gets entered once.