Building and sending an offer
Deliverables, pricing, add-ons, and the four things that must be true before you can send.
The offer wizard walks through four steps: essentials, deliverables, contract, and review.
Arrived here from a simple project? Adding an offer moves the project back to Draft first, and Billow confirms before it does.
Essentials
The account, the contact, and Offer Valid Until, which is the date the offer expires. There’s also an optional summary: a note to yourself about what the work is, internal and never shown to your client.
Currency, tax rate, and deposit percentage are pre-filled from Settings → Accounting. Change them here if this project is different. With advanced tax mode on, the tax labels and the second rate are editable here too.
The deposit percentage decides your whole billing schedule. Pick from 0%, 25%, 33%, 50%, or 100%, and get it right before you send. Deposits and automatic invoices shows what each one produces.
Deliverables
Each line has a title, an optional description, and a price. Two ways to price:
Fixed: one price for the line
Quantity: a rate times a number of units
Add-ons
Tick Mark as Upsell on a line and your client can decline it. They see an Add-On badge with a Reject toggle.
Anything they decline drops out of the offer total and never reaches an invoice.
Useful for the nice-to-haves you’d rather offer than argue about. The first deliverable can’t be an add-on, since something has to be the actual work.
Contract
Optional, controlled by the Include a contract toggle. Off by default on new offers.
Turn it on and generate a contract from your template. See Contracts and signatures.
Review, then send
Before Billow will send, four things must be true:
The account has an address
The project is still a Draft
There’s at least one deliverable
If the offer includes a contract, you’ve signed it
Point 4 only applies when the contract toggle is on. An offer without a contract sends without any signature from you.
What sending does
Assigns the offer number, e.g. OFF-2026-0001, counting up per year
Creates the share link
Moves the project to Offer Pending
Emails your client with the link and an 8-digit code
Numbers are assigned on send, not on create, so drafts don’t burn one.
After sending
Your client accepts or rejects on the link. You get an email either way. If the code goes astray, resend it without disturbing the offer.
If the offer passes its Valid Until date untouched, Billow emails you, not the client. Nothing is sent to them automatically.
