When you're creating a quote, sometimes it's not only about applying some price-list to a list of tasks created based on analysis report generated by a CAT tool. In certain cases, you may wish to estimate possibility to meet tight deadline, or possibility to offer discounts without making a margin negative. To solve such tasks, TBM has quote planning dialog, which allows to select vendors and estimate expenses and nearest deadline. UI of this tool is almost identical to the project planning tool, but with a few differences.

To open quote planning dialog, fill-in all the necessary details of a quote, including target tasks. When you're ready, click Quote planning button on the toolbar. The following dialog appears:

Top bar displays quote start and delivery dates, as well as a field to specify desired margin and fixed expenses.
Next, you will find a table, where the first column contains a list of quote items, with information about language pair, service type and average volume.
Then, you can create multiple columns on the right with different sets of vendors. You can select vendors from the drop-down list or click Search button to open separate dialog to pickup vendors, which contains more data comparing to the drop-down list, including recommendations. When you select any vendor (or all vendors in a column), application will show available volume of a selected vendor and an icon showing if selected vendor should be able to meet a deadline. Totals below each column inform you about closest delivery time based on selected set of vendors, as well as total estimated amount.

If you wish to adjust prices which are currently applied in your quote according to values selected in the quote planning tool, click Select this group button in the column header (so this column will be highlighted), and click OK.

If you have entered fixed amount at the top bar, this amount will be equally divided across all quote items (by average volume) and added to prices, respectively.

When you apply a group of vendors using a quote planning tool, selected vendors will be saved in the Planned vendor column in the Quote items table. In the result, when a quote will be accepted, application will not only create a project with corresponding translation jobs, but also translation assignments, with correct vendors preselected (as well as their prices). Created assignments will have Draft status, so you will need to switch it to Prepare to initiate job offer sending to vendors.