Overview of sales
BEFORE YOU BEGIN This feature may be hidden in your Autotask instance because it is not activated. If so, you can activate it on the 
> Admin > Admin Categories > Activations page. Refer to Activations.
About opportunities
Your Autotask instance has features that allow you to forecast sales and generate quotes for customers and prospects. A potential sale you have identified is called an opportunity in Autotask.
Companies have different thresholds when potential sales should be considered opportunities, but typically you will create an opportunity in Autotask when a sale can be forecasted.
A sales opportunity exists when
- The customer has a need or requirement
- Your company has a solution for the need or requirement
- The solution or requirement must be implemented in a specific time frame
- The customer has a budget to implement the solution
Not all opportunities will result in a sale. Some will become inactive or be lost to a competitor, and some customers will not be able to implement a solution for financial reasons, however much they need it. This is why the sales process is often pictured as a sales funnel:
EXAMPLE You have exhibited at a trade show ("Marketing Campaign") and returned with 147 leads. You do an initial round of qualification calls, and it appears that you have 63 solid leads. You follow up with presentations, demos, and client visits, and determine that 32 customers have requirements you have a solution for, a concrete timeline and a budget. These, you consider true Opportunities, so you provide them a Quote (proposal). Eighteen of them lose funding or get a better quote from a competitor. You now have 14 viable customers.
About quotes
The document you provide to a customer that lists prices for products and/or services and guarantees them for a specified time is called a Quote.
In Autotask, you can create an opportunity without creating a quote, but you cannot create a quote without creating an opportunity. Refer to Adding or editing an Autotask quote.
You can also create a quote in Kaseya Quote Manager (formerly Datto Commerce). Kaseya Quote Manager is a stand-alone product, but if the integration is enabled, Kaseya Quote Manager quotes will replace Autotask quotes everywhere in the Autotask UI. Refer to The Kaseya Quote Manager integration.
About sales orders
A Sales Order allows you to track quoted products after the quote is accepted and the deal is closed.
NOTE This feature is only available if the Procurement workflow in Inventory is enabled.
Refer to Introduction to sales orders.
