archoverflow DOCS
Tools
Projects
PRIVATE BETA

Drawings & documents · Proposal

Proposal overview

Put a fee proposal together from sections you pick and order, in your brand, and print it as a PDF.

Alpha tool. It's early and still changing: expect things to break, and keep your own copy of anything you can't lose. What alpha means

Proposal builds a fee proposal from sections you pick, reorder and turn on or off: a cover, a letter, your firm and team, past projects, scope, schedule, fee and budget, site analysis, terms and a signature page. It lays them out on real pages in your brand, and prints a client copy and an internal copy as PDFs.

The fee and site sections can read their numbers from a Fees estimate and a Site GIS site in the same project. See Linked sources.

The main screen #

  • The toolbar, left to right: Project ▾ (where the proposal is saved), the proposal's name, the Client copy / Internal copy switch, Export ▾, and Snapshots.
  • The list on the left: Project & page and Brand at the top, then Sections in print order with + Add ▾. Each section shows the page it starts on.
  • The pages in the middle: the proposal as it prints, one sheet per page with a header and "Page n of N" at the foot. Click anything on a page to open its section.
  • The panel on the right: the settings for whatever you picked on the left.

On a phone, the Sections, Edit and Preview buttons at the bottom switch between the three areas.

Start a new proposal #

Proposal isn't on a project page's + New menu yet. Start it from the tool:

  1. Open Proposal. It opens on its home page.
  2. Under Start fresh, pick one:
    • + Blank: the usual sections (cover, contents, letter, scope, schedule, fee, terms, signature), empty.
    • Sample proposal: a complete made-up proposal to look around in.
    • Short letter proposal: letter, scope, fee, terms and signature, for small jobs.
    • Qualifications package: cover, contents, letter, firm, team and past projects, with no fee.
  3. To save it with a project, open Project ▾ and click Push to a project….

A new proposal starts on this computer. It never replaces a proposal that's already saved in a project. See Projects and schemes.

If you're signed out, the templates open as a demo: you can edit, but nothing saves and nothing exports.

Open existing work #

  • From the home page: Your proposals lists the one you were working on and every proposal in your projects. Click one to open it.
  • From inside the tool: open Project ▾. The bottom of the menu lists the proposals in your projects; click one to open it.

To get back to the home page, open the tool's address again (or reload the page).

Who can see it #

A proposal you push into a project is shared with that project's people, as owner, editor or viewer. See People and roles. Until you push it, it's only on this computer.

The Snapshots button takes snapshots as in every tool. Proposal has no view-only links yet: to send a proposal to a client, send the PDF.

The internal copy's hours, rates and notes are saved in the same proposal. Anyone who can open the proposal can get to them, so check who's on the project before you add internal numbers.

An AI assistant connected through the AI connector can read a proposal, but can't change it.