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Quick Starts by RoleBroker

Broker quick start

You turn a customer’s “got one?” into a priced quote and a closed order. In APEX that flow runs through one module — the Pipeline tabs — plus the customer profile where the pricing and the portal access live. Here is that day, task by task.

Your screens

WhereWhy you live there
Pipeline (sidebar)The sales hub — its in-page tabs are Pipeline · RFQ Inbox · Quotes · Commissions · Follow-ups.
Quotes (sidebar)Shortcuts into the same hub: Customer Quotes and Customer RFQs.
CustomersContract pricing and portal access, per account.
Sales OrdersWhere an accepted quote becomes a fulfillable order.

Your first day, task by task

1. Set contract prices before you quote

  1. Open Customers, pick the account, and scroll to Contract pricing.
  2. Add the agreement — part number, condition, agreed price, optional quantity cap and effective window — and click Add agreement.

Quote lines price themselves from these at creation, so this comes first. See Contract pricing.

2. Capture the demand

  1. Open Pipeline → RFQ Inbox and click + New RFQ.
  2. Pick the customer, enter the part number, quantity, condition, and urgency, and click Capture RFQ.
  3. Watch the toast — an exact part-number match against your stock flips the request to MATCHED with an In stock pill.

Requests also arrive by themselves from customers on the portal. See The RFQ inbox.

3. Quote it

  1. Open the RFQ and click Create quote → — APEX drafts the quote, seeds the line from the request, and applies the customer’s contract price if one covers it.
  2. Review the record, then click SENT in the Lifecycle cell — that publishes the quote to the customer’s portal and stamps the sent date.

See Quotes & contract pricing.

4. Chase what’s open

  1. Open the Follow-ups tab once a day — every SENT quote with no answer, highest value and coldest first, with PAST DUE / EXPIRING / STALE pills.
  2. Start at the top: click Follow up, call or write the customer, and record the outcome on the quote (ACCEPTED / REJECTED / EXPIRED).

See the follow-ups worklist.

5. Hand the win off

Accepting a quote records the win and stops there — you create the fulfillment record yourself: a sales order for a part from stock, or a work order for a shop job. See Margins & the handoff.

6. Work the board

If your desk tracks deals, move them across Pipeline — SOURCED through CLOSED_WON / CLOSED_LOST. Closing won stamps the outcome and accrues commission when a rule is configured. See The deal pipeline.

7. Put your customers on the portal

  1. Open Customers, then the account, then Portal access.
  2. Enter the contact’s email and click Send invitation — the link lasts 7 days.

Portal customers answer quotes online and submit their own requests straight into your inbox. See Getting access.

Watch out for

  • Console-created quotes carry no cost — margins read 0% (or 100% on contract-priced lines). Only quotes that arrived with costs through your data import or integrations show honest margins. Price deliberately; don’t trust the margin column on quotes you created from an RFQ.
  • Lines and prices are fixed at creation. There is no line editor on the quote — set the customer’s contract prices before clicking Create quote →, not after.
  • SENT doesn’t email anyone, and nothing auto-expires. Marking SENT publishes to the portal only — send the quote through your usual channel too. A quote past its validity stays SENT until you mark it EXPIRED; the follow-ups list flags it PAST DUE meanwhile.
  • Accepted ≠ ordered, and a confirmed sales order doesn’t reserve stock. Create the SO or WO yourself, and move fast on stock you can’t re-source — only work-order reservations protect free-to-sell today.
  • There’s no close button on an RFQ. A request you decide not to quote stays in the open counts — expect the OPEN RFQs tally to include dead requests.
  • A portal decline’s reason never shows in the console. If the customer declined with a note, ask them through your usual channel.
  • Commissions is owners and admins only — a member clicking that tab sees an access notice asking them to request access from an owner or admin.

Go deeper: the full Quoting & Brokerage guide covers every tab in this loop.

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