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Sometimes the Estimates I create might take a few days to complete.  So, I have a partially completed "Draft" estimate that has been saved under that Opportunity/customer.  The problem is, this "draft" estimate shows up on the customer portal before it is complete, and this can lead to some confusion.  Any ideas on how this can be avoided?

Thanks

Hi Dave,

To do this, I recommend filtering out all of the estimates with a status of "draft" from the grid on the ContactsPortal_Home screen. Since this is a default screen you can't edit it directly, but you can make a copy, and then replace the original screen with the copy. To do this, edit the grid on the screen DueTransactions. Skip to step 3 to setup the filter. You should see 3 filters already there, you can add a 4th to filter out the drafts.

What is needed is a way to identify which transactions are drafts. The transactions table is not editable (limitation by QuickBooks) so unfortunately you can't add a checkbox to that table. Are you able to do this by using one of the existing fields? My suggestion is to use the "Wait for Sync Approval" checkbox, so that drafts aren't yet sent to QuickBooks and won't be visible on the portal. Will this work for you?

-Russell

I think I understand.  I will give this a try.  Thanks!

Actually, I don't think that will work. I don't sync Estimates to Quickbooks until we get a "Go Ahead" from the lead/customer. But I need them to see the Estimate in the meantime when I email it to them.  So if I used the "Wait for Sync Approval" as a way to designate whether it is a Draft Estimate, it would prevent leads/customers from seeing the Estimate at all.  Make sense?

Hi Dave,

Makes sense. In this case you will need to filter with a different field. Could you hide all transactions that have a type of "Estimate", or do you need to show some estimates? What about the DueDate field, if the transactions you want to filter out don't have a due date yet, you could filter those out. My suggestion would be for you to go through the transactions fields, to see if there are any you could "repurpose" to use for this filter.

-Russell