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Sending proposals

When you've finished quoting an opportunity, you send the proposal to the client from the Proposal section on the opportunity edit page. The Send proposal button (or Send tender response if you've ticked the Formal tender toggle) is only enabled once everything the proposal needs is in place. This page covers what those prerequisites are, how to clear the most common one (approving AI-generated content in the portal), and what happens after you click Send.

1. The Send button and why it's sometimes disabled

The Send proposal button on an opportunity won't activate until all of these are true:

  • The opportunity is linked to a contact, and that contact has an email address.
  • The opportunity has an account manager.
  • The agreement start date is set.
  • The main site type is set.
  • There's at least one priced service or consumable on the opportunity.
  • Each service on the opportunity has its scope filled in. For shift-based services that means at least one shift with at least one area, and each area has at least one task. For C6 hygiene services that means at least one replenishment task with both quantity and frequency set.
  • Every AI-generated section of every proposal document has been approved.

The first six are usually set during quoting. The last one — approving AI-generated content — is the one that catches people out, because it lives on the client portal rather than in the BMS.

When the Send proposal button is disabled, hover over it and a tooltip explains what's missing. If only one thing is missing, the tooltip is a single sentence. If several things are missing, it's a short list — work through them one at a time and the button activates as soon as the last one is resolved.

[SCREENSHOT: Disabled Send proposal button on the Proposal section, with the tooltip visible showing a couple of unmet prerequisites including "Unapproved AI-generated content"]

The unapproved-AI-content line in the tooltip names which document or documents are blocking — that tells you exactly which document to open in the portal to clear the block.

The incomplete-scope line in the tooltip names which service is missing scope — that tells you which service to open and finish off.

2. Approving AI-generated content in the portal

Some of the documents in the proposal are generated with AI and need staff approval before the proposal can be sent — currently the Capability Statement and the Job Safety Analysis. (Safe work method statement and equipment & chemical spec are planned to follow the same pattern when they're built.) Before you can send, you need to look over each AI-generated section and approve it.

To get to the documents:

  1. On the opportunity, click View proposal (or View tender response if you've ticked the Formal tender toggle). This opens the proposal in the client portal in a new tab — the same view your client will see, plus staff-only review controls.
  2. The portal's proposal page lists each document as a tile. Click the Capability Statement tile, then the Job Safety Analysis tile (or any other AI document on the proposal).

Each document is made up of several sections. Some sections are static — pre-written prose that doesn't change per client — and don't need any action from you. The sections that do need approval are marked at the top with a small purple sparkle icon and an AI generated label, alongside an Approve button.

[SCREENSHOT: An AI-generated section on the portal showing the purple sparkle icon, the "AI generated" label, and the Approve button — with the regenerate and chat icons visible on the right]

For each AI-generated section:

  • Read it. Check the content reads well for this client and reflects what you'd want to send.
  • Regenerate if it's off. The circular arrow icon on the section's right-hand side regenerates the section from scratch. Use this if the content is in the wrong ballpark.
  • Chat for specific tweaks. The speech-bubble icon opens a chat panel below the section. You can ask for specific edits ("make the second paragraph shorter", "swap the third tile for one about healthcare", "use British spelling"). The change is applied immediately and you can keep iterating.
  • Click Approve when you're happy. The Approve button changes to "Approved" and the section is marked as ready.

Repeat for every AI-generated section in every AI document on the proposal. As soon as the last one is approved, switch back to the BMS tab — within a couple of seconds, the Send proposal button activates.

If you change anything on the BMS side that affects the AI content — for example, changing the main site type, or modifying services that feed the document prompts — it's worth opening the portal again and regenerating any sections whose content no longer reflects the latest inputs. The system doesn't force you to re-approve sections after BMS-side edits, but the AI's output is only as current as the last time the section was generated.

The capability statement's AI sections cover who-we-are paragraphs, the core verticals tiles, and the experience bullets. The JSA's one AI section is the Safety Focus Areas (the per-hazard tiles tailored to the client's main site type). For AI quoting specifically, that's a separate workflow — see AI quoting.

Not every proposal document needs staff approval. The Quality & Performance Framework is included in every proposal but is pre-written — the same content for every client — so there's nothing to approve. You'll see it in the portal's document list, but the Send button doesn't wait on it.

3. Sending or resending the proposal

Once Send proposal is enabled, click it. Two things happen:

  • An email goes to the linked contact with a link to view the proposal in the portal.
  • The opportunity is locked. While locked, pricing-sensitive fields across the opportunity, its services, and its shifts are read-only — you can't change a service's type, site, quote-by method, discount or invoicing settings, or a shift's day, time of day, or shift length without unlocking first.

If the opportunity has already been sent once, the button reads Resend proposal instead (or Resend tender response on a formal tender). Use Resend after you've unlocked and made changes — the client gets a fresh email and the portal shows the updated content.

4. Unlocking a sent proposal to make changes

When the opportunity is locked, a banner appears at the top of the Proposal section letting you know the client can't see or sign the proposal at the moment, with an Unlock button. Clicking Unlock asks you for a short reason — this is part of the audit trail, so type something meaningful ("client requested change to frequency on Service 2", not "x").

After unlocking, you can edit pricing-sensitive fields again. When you're done, click Resend proposal to push the updated proposal to the client. Until you do, the portal shows the client a "this proposal is being revised" message — they can't see or sign anything in the meantime.

One constraint: if the client has already signed and the opportunity has become a contract, Unlock is no longer available. At that point any changes need to be handled through the contract amendment process rather than the proposal flow — talk to Glenn or Jordan if you find yourself in that situation.