Help & articles

Where Enquiries Arrive

Everything inbound lands on the Enquiries board under CRM, whether it came through one of your public enquiry forms or you logged it yourself after a phone call, an email or somebody walking into the office. Opportunities you go out and find sit on their own board next door.

The enquiry is where a job lives before it is a quote. Whoever takes the first call jots down what they know; from there it can be handed to a salesperson, or held while you ask the chef what menu is realistic. Everything you learn along the way goes on the enquiry, and all of it follows the job onto the quote when you convert.

Rows you have not opened are marked Unopened, and a Waiting column tells you how long the customer has been sitting there: Today, This week, Over a week, Over 2 weeks, Over a month. The colour escalates with the wait, so the ones going cold are the ones that stand out. Hover the badge for the exact date it arrived.

Opening One

Click the customer name, or Manage, to open the enquiry over the board. Opening it clears the Unopened mark, so the board stops flagging something you have already read.

The panel has two halves. On the left, Enquiry details: everything the customer told you, whether typed into your form or taken down by you. On the right, Create a quote: the handful of decisions a quote needs before it can exist.

Linking the Customer

A quote belongs to a customer, so this is the one thing an enquiry always needs. If the email address matches somebody you already have, Puree links them for you and says so. Otherwise you have two choices:

• Link an existing customer: search and pick, for a regular who wrote in from a different address.
• Create a customer from these details: builds the customer and contact from the enquiry itself, with no retyping.

Once linked, choose the Contact and the Delivery or Event Address. Both come from that customer's records, and you can add a new one from here without leaving the panel. If the enquiry named a location that you have no address for, it becomes one when you raise the quote.

Setting Up the Quote

The rest of the panel is the same setup you would fill in on the first page of the order form, so the quote opens ready to price:

• Event or Delivery Date.
• Order type: this decides the shape of the job, and the fields below it change to match. Whatever you leave in this dropdown is what the quote is raised as.
• Delivery time(s) for a delivery, or an Event start time for a staffed event, or a Collection time if the customer is collecting. You only ever see the ones your chosen type needs.
• Delivery fee.
• Terms & conditions: if you only have one set, it is chosen for you.
• Introduction: the paragraph at the top of the customer's quote. Pick a template or write your own.

Every field saves as you go. There is no Save button on this panel and nothing to lose by closing it.

Ready to Quote

At the foot of the panel, Puree tells you whether the enquiry can become a quote yet. When something is outstanding you get Before you can quote and the exact list, which may include:

• Link a customer
• Add a contact for the customer
• Add an event date
• Add an event location (becomes the address)
• Choose terms & conditions
• Add a delivery time, an event start time or a collection time, depending on the order type
• Choose a venue, for a venue hire quote

When the list is empty it changes to Ready to quote and the Convert to quote button becomes the obvious next step. The idea is that you never press it only to be told what you should have done first.

Converting

Convert to quote takes everything you have just set up and opens the quote straight at the menu step, since the first page is already answered. Add your items, staff and packages as usual and save.

Nothing is committed until you save a quote with at least one item on it. If you get halfway through and change your mind, or the phone goes, nothing is left behind: no empty quote, and the enquiry stays open on the board.

Once the quote is saved, the enquiry is marked as processed and joined to it. The conversation you had on the enquiry, along with any files, is copied onto the quote, so the person pricing it can see what was asked for. Any follow-up reminders still open on the enquiry are ticked off, because there is nothing left to chase.

You do not have to remember any of it while you price. A quote raised from an enquiry carries an Enquiry details tab down its right edge: click it and the original brief, the notes and the attachments open beside the menu you are building. If the chef said only certain items are available, it is there while you choose them.

From that point the job lives on Quotes pending, and clicking it there opens this same panel, so the history stays in one place.

While You Are Still Working On It

Not every enquiry is ready to quote the day it arrives. The panel is built for the middle part too:

• Email: write to the customer from here. What you send is kept with the enquiry, so the next person to open it can see what was said.
• Add note: record what happened on a call, with attachments if you need them. Notes travel onto the quote when you convert.
• Follow-ups: book the dates you want to chase on. Each one can email you, a specific team member, or nobody at all if it is just a note to yourself.
• Assign manager: hand it to somebody. The manager filter on the board reads this, and the person you pick carries through onto the quote.
• Add tag: label it for your own filtering.

Notes, Files and Puree AI

Most of what you learn about a job arrives as something too long to retype: a fifteen-message email chain, last year's quote as a PDF, a planner's run sheet. Add note opens a slideover with a Puree AI toolbar across the top, so that material can become a note without you summarising it yourself.

• Scan email: paste the whole thread in, straight from your inbox. Puree AI writes the short version — what was agreed, what changed — and saves it as a conversation note. The forwarding headers and the pleasantries do not come with it.
• Scan document: upload a PDF or an image and it is read, summarised into a note, and kept attached. A brief, a run sheet, a venue quote, a dietary list, or last year's order when the customer says "same as before".
• Attach files: for anything you just want on the record, with no summary.

Both scans take an optional Instructions line, which is worth using: "just highlight the menu", or "focus on the dietary requirements and the final headcount". Each one spends AI credits, and the panel says how many before you run it. If the call fails, the credits go back.

Everything here is written as an ordinary note, so it travels onto the quote with the rest of the conversation.

Enquiries That Will Not Become Quotes

Some enquiries end without one, and leaving them on the board makes the board useless. Two ways to close them off, both from the enquiry:

• Mark as processed (no quote): you dealt with it, and it did not need a quote. Answered a question, referred them elsewhere, took a booking that was not catering.
• Archive: spam, a duplicate, or a test submission. Off the board, still on record.

Either way you land back on the board you came from, ready for the next one.

A Workable Routine

1. Work the Enquiries board top down, starting with anything Unopened or waiting over a week.
2. Open it, read the details, and link or create the customer.
3. Fill in the date, order type and times. If something is missing, email the customer from the panel and book a follow-up for when you expect a reply.
4. When the footer says Ready to quote, convert, price it and send.
5. Anything that will never be a quote gets marked as processed or archived, so the board only holds live work.