Quote to Cash: QTC Process Plus the Best Software

If you're looking to optimize your sales process, close more deals, and delight more prospects and customers, then you should consider the quote to cash process.

In this article, we’ll talk about the quote to cash process and which tools can help your team with QTC.

What is quote to cash?

Quote to cash refers to the parts of the sales cycle that drive revenue. This includes everything from quote creation to sharing a proposal to receiving payment.

Some would say the moment that a prospect initially shows interest in your product/ service is the first part of the quote to cash cycle — that’s because it has a direct impact on a subsequent transaction.

Why is quote to cash beneficial?

The quote to cash process is beneficial because it helps you manage and analyze the relationship between every aspect of the sales process that’s involved in business transactions — and therefore your revenue.

It helps you streamline and improve upon the sales process steps (quote, proposal, and contract creation as well as payment collection) to make them more efficient, accurate, and simple for your team members and customers.

As a result, reps will be able to close more deals and delight more customers.

Quote to Cash Process and Configure, Price, Quote

You may have also heard of configure, price, quote — or CPQ — before. CPQ is a component of QTC — it allows you to generate price quotes for orders quickly and accurately.

CPQ helps sales teams efficiently generate accurate and personalized proposals and quotes while taking into account factors like customizations for individual prospects, product features, and discounts.

Quote to Cash Process (a.k.a. Quote to Cash Cycle)

The quote to cash process — also known as the quote to cash cycle — are the steps that a sales rep will work through with a prospect in order to move through the parts of the sales cycle that directly impact a transaction.

Typically, the QTC process looks like this:

1. A sales rep determines they need to create and provide a prospect with a quote.
2. The sales rep creates a quote proposal for the prospect using your QTC/ CPQ software. These tools will help the rep personalize the quote for the prospect as well as ensure it’s accurate and includes any available discounts. (We’ll cover some of these tools shortly.)
3. The sales rep presents the proposal to the prospect.
4. The prospect and sales rep engage in negotiation (if any) and come to an agreement.
5. The sales rep creates and shares the final contract that has been decided upon.
6. An invoice is created.
7. Payment and receipt are collected and generated.

Quote to Cash Software

Quote to cash software is meant to help you manage all parts of the quote to cash process — the features you'll gain access to with one of these tools have the power to help your team increase productivity, efficiency, and accuracy.

1. HubSpot payments

Best quote to cash tool for:

Digitizing payments, increasing revenue growth, and improving the buyer's experience with natively built one-time or recurring payment links.

Price

Credit and debit cards: You pay a flat 2.9% of the transaction amount.

ACH payments: You pay 0.5% of the transaction amount, capped at $10 per transaction. 

Key Features

HubSpot payments gives you the ability to add a payment link — or a recurring payment link — to your quote. Meaning, you can provide a prospect with an estimate as well as the ability to transact at that exact moment.

HubSpot is unique because it's powered by your CRM — any information about a prospect that's embedded in their customer profile is available to you throughout the quote to cash process. Having a single record of everything related to your contacts allows you to streamline the quote to cash process and efficiently personalize quotes.

You can also easily see if a customer has or hasn't already paid and then kick off the appropriate automated workflow. This connection also means service reps have visualizations of every customer's previous payments at their fingertips.

Pro Tip: Use HubSpot Payments to delight more customers with natively built CRM-powered payments.

2. Chargebee

Best quote to cash tool for:

Configuring quotes with custom contract terms that immediately turn into subscriptions upon acceptance.

Price

Chargebee's Enterprise plan offers quotes. Contact their sales team for pricing and a demo.

Key Features

Chargebee is a subscription billing and revenue management platform with a quote to cash tool. It allows you to create quotes with contract terms that become subscriptions once your prospect accepts them.

Email and share secure links to your quotes with prospects that they can easily accept. Upon acceptance, the quote immediately turns into a subscription. An invoice is also generated at that time.

Include contract terms in your quotes as well as renewal information. If your prospect wants to extend the expiration date of the quote you provided, you can do so easily and without the need to create an entirely new quote.

Chargebee also supports PDF quotes. Send a quote PDF to a prospect that they can accept via email — you can then generate a subscription for that customer along with an invoice.

3. DealHub

Best quote to cash tool for:

Creating automated quote generation and approval processes within a configure-price-quote (CPQ) platform.

Price

DealHub CPQ pricing — which includes quotes — is based on the number of users you have as well as your implementation. Contact DealHub for a quote.

Key Features

DealHub is a CPQ and revenue amplification software with quotes and proposals. The quotes tool allows you to create custom quotes for your prospects and customers in your preferred format (e.g. PDF, Microsoft Word, etc.).

DealHub makes it easy to add discounts to quotes for certain prospects as well as establish automated workflows for managing your quote delivery and approval process.

Within DealHub, you can also update product information, quote configurations, pricing, and more to ensure your entire sales team stays aligned, consistent, and efficient when it comes to producing quotes.

4. QuoteWerks

Best quote to cash tool for:

Creating accurate and consistent quotes for your CPQ and quote to cash processes, and knowing when your quotes are opened and viewed by recipients.

Price

QuoteWerks has three plans that you can pay for monthly, annually, or in full, ranging from $15/mo/user to $29/mo/user.

Key Features

QuoteWerks is a sales quote and proposal software for CPQ and quote to cash processes. Once your quote is accepted, it allows you to collect deposits, progress payments, balances, and full amounts.

Use QuoteWerks' peer and management approval workflows to help you ensure every quote is consistent and accurate. Brand your quotes and customize them with terms and conditions and other contracts — then, get notified when your prospects have opened your quotes.

QuoteWerks also serves as a centralized quote storage location — meaning, your team can store all quote documents in a single and accessible location to make production more efficient.

Use the QTC Process and QTC Software on Your Sales Team

Start using the quote to cash process and QTC tools to make your sales cycle more efficient and effective — that way, reps are able to convert more prospects into paying and delighted customers.