The Quote That Lapsed in Silence
A quote that expires unanswered is a sale nobody followed up. A sales order that passes its expected date is a promise the customer is about to notice was broken. Two reminders, each to the person who wrote the document, while there is still time.
Every quote carries a valid-until date. Every sales order carries an expected date. Both are written down at the moment someone makes a promise, and both are usually forgotten by the next morning. The customer remembers. The software has the date. The salesperson is the only one in the room who does not know it is coming.
Two reminders now close that gap in the conversation. The person who wrote a customer quote hears about it three days before it expires. The person who raised a sales order hears about it the morning after its expected date passes, if it has not been fully invoiced.
The quote: three days of follow-up time
A quote that is still open (in draft, approved or already sent to the customer) and that expires within the next three days triggers one reminder to whoever wrote it. Three days is enough time for a phone call, a revised price or an extension, and short enough that the quote is still fresh in the customer’s mind.
Without the reminder, the quote simply expires overnight and moves out of the open list. Nobody decided to let it go. The reminder makes that a decision: follow up, extend the date, or let it lapse knowingly. If a quote is accepted, converted to a sales order or invoiced before the window, nothing is sent at all.
The reminder does not chase the customer. It reminds the person who knows the customer.
The sales order: the morning after the promise
A confirmed sales order, or one partly invoiced, whose expected date passed yesterday and is not yet fully invoiced, triggers one reminder to whoever raised it. Fully invoiced is the line because that is when the goods leave and the customer is billed; an order still short of it is an order still owed.
The reminder names the customer, the expected date, the order’s value and whether it is partly invoiced or not invoiced at all, and suggests the two honest moves: deliver and invoice what is ready, or agree a new date with the customer and update the order. It is sent once. A sales order a week late does not produce seven reminders; it produced one, the morning it became late, when a call to the customer still sounds like good service rather than an apology.
When the salesperson has left
Orders outlive the people who raise them. If the person who raised an order no longer has an active account, the reminder goes to the people who manage sales orders instead, so an order is never owed to an empty inbox.
Old orders are left alone
The sales order reminder looks back thirty days. An order whose expected date passed in the spring is a backlog for the sales manager to review, not a reminder to send this morning. That window is also why switching the reminders on in a busy workspace sends a handful of messages rather than hundreds.
Both arrive by email, in the bell and as a phone notification that opens the quote or order itself in the AWRA mobile app. They are two separate rows in notification preferences, Customer Quote About to Expire and Sales Order Past Its Expected Date, so a team can keep one and switch off the other. For stock promised against an order, see The Count Due Today, which covers holds about to be released.
Four questions for your sales follow-up
How many quotes expired last month without a follow-up call?
A good answer sounds like
A number you can find.
What it actually means
If nobody knows, the answer is most of them.
Who hears first that an order is late: you or the customer?
A good answer sounds like
You, the morning after.
What it actually means
A late order raised by the customer is a complaint. Raised by you, it is service.
Who owns the orders of someone who has left?
A good answer sounds like
Whoever manages sales orders.
What it actually means
Otherwise their customers stop hearing from anyone.
Does the reminder repeat every day?
A good answer sounds like
Once per document.
What it actually means
Daily repeats teach a sales team to filter the email.
What AWRA OpsHub does today
- A reminder three days before an open customer quote expires, once, to whoever wrote it.
- A reminder the morning after a sales order’s expected date when it is not yet fully invoiced, once, to whoever raised it.
- A fallback to the people who manage sales orders when the person who raised it has left.
- A thirty-day look-back on late orders, so old history is not sent as news.
- Email, the in-app bell and a phone notification that opens the quote or order, each switchable.
More we can add to your workspace
- A courtesy reminder to the customer’s contact before their quote lapses, from your own email address.
- Extending a quote’s valid-until date in one tap from the reminder.
- A weekly late-orders digest for the sales manager, across the whole team.
Where we point you to a specialist
- We do not extend or re-price a quote on our own. Whether a price still holds is a commercial decision for your team.
A customer-facing reminder and a one-tap extension work best together, and we would quote them as one piece.
Anything above that you need, we can build for you
Everything listed above as something we can add describes what ships in the standard product today — it is a starting point, not a limit on what AWRA OpsHub can do for your organisation. Kenya's eTIMS integration and its maintained payroll engine are both in the product because clients needed them and commissioned them; neither appeared by itself, and the same door is open for whatever you just read about. One qualification so this is worth what it claims: a small number of things on this blog we deliberately leave to a specialist rather than build — a statutory ledger we will not sign our name to, a rule that would decide a tax question for you, a clinical or member-funds record that belongs in a regulated system — and where that is true the post says so in those words. Everything else is a scope, a timeline and a price.
The operational work, which is what most commissions actually are
An extra approval stage in a chain that does not match the standard one, a custom field set on employees or assets that only your sector needs, an expiry that has to block an order rather than send an email, a report your board asks for in a shape nothing produces, or a scanner or weighbridge feeding the goods-in door. These are the commissions we are asked for most often and the smallest ones we quote — and unlike a revenue-authority pipeline, none of them waits on a regulator.
The module-shaped additions, which are the ones readers ask for most often
A price list with real discount authority, a customer-facing quotation that expires, a bill of materials or recipe costing, a staff advance that is issued, acquitted and chased, a member or unit ledger, a matching rule that holds a payment. Each of these is a build rather than a setting, and each has been quoted before — a bigger piece of work than a custom field, with a written spec and a date instead of a roadmap slide.
The report, document or pack nothing currently produces
The board pack in the shape your board actually asks for, a donor or funder layout, an invoice or receipt template carrying what your regulator or your customer expects, a dataset the report builder cannot reach yet. Usually the fastest thing on this list to deliver, because the data is already in the system.
Systems, rails and hardware you already run
The accounting package, CRM, online store, core banking or custom database you intend to keep — connected through our API so a fact is entered once and appears everywhere it is needed. Plus the physical edge: a scanner, a scale, a weighbridge or a till peripheral feeding the door it belongs to.
How it works: you describe the requirement, we return a written scope, timeline and cost, and once agreed it is built into your environment and maintained as part of the product. Nothing here waits on a regulator or a published specification, which is why operational builds are the ones we quote fastest. Tell us the requirement that would otherwise rule us out — that is a better first conversation than a demo.
Tell us what your operation needsThe short version
The person who wrote a customer quote is reminded three days before it expires, once, while there is time to follow up. The person who raised a sales order is reminded the morning after its expected date if it is not fully invoiced, once, and the people who manage sales orders get it instead if they have left. Both come by email, in the bell and on the phone, and each has its own switch.
Quotes, sales orders and proformas
From a quote the customer can accept online to a sales order that reserves stock and becomes an invoice.
Read the feature pageFrequently asked questions
Does AWRA OpsHub remind salespeople before a quote expires?
Yes. Whoever wrote a customer quote that is still in draft, approved or sent is reminded once, three days before its valid-until date.
What happens when a sales order passes its expected date?
The person who raised it is reminded the next morning if the order is not yet fully invoiced. If they no longer have an active account, the people who manage sales orders are reminded instead.
Are customers sent these reminders?
No. These reminders go to your own team. The customer hears from the salesperson who follows up.
Can we switch off the sales order reminder but keep the quote reminder?
Yes. They are separate rows in notification preferences, each with its own email, in-app and push switches.
