Shopify quote vs invoice: when to send each

Send a quotation when the customer still needs to agree to the price, and send an invoice when they’ve agreed and it’s time to pay. On Shopify, both start from the same place: a draft order. A quotation presents the draft as an offer with a valid-until date, so the customer can review it, ask questions or get sign-off before anything is charged. An invoice presents the same draft as a bill with a secure checkout link, so the customer can pay straight away and the draft becomes a real order. Picking the right one matters most for wholesale, B2B, custom work and phone orders, where sending a bill too early stalls the deal and sending an offer too late costs you the sale.

This guide explains the difference, when to use each, and what a good quotation includes. It’s based on building draft order quotations and invoices into Send Invoice, a Shopify app that turns orders and drafts into branded invoices, quotations and other documents.

What is a draft order on Shopify?

A draft order is an order you build by hand in Shopify admin instead of the customer checking out. Merchants use drafts for:

• Wholesale and B2B orders with negotiated prices or volume discounts
• Phone, email and in-person orders taken outside the storefront
• Custom work, such as engraving, made-to-order items or setup fees, added as custom line items
• Deposits and special pricing that the storefront can’t express

A draft moves through three states: open, invoice sent and completed. Once it’s completed it becomes a normal Shopify order. What Shopify doesn’t give you out of the box is a proper quotation: a branded offer document with its own number and an expiry date. That’s the gap this guide covers.

Quote vs invoice: the difference

The simplest test: has the customer said yes to this price? If not, send a quotation. If they have, send the invoice.

When to send a quotation

The buyer needs sign-off

In B2B, the person you’re talking to often isn’t the person who approves spend. A purchasing manager needs a document they can forward, file and attach to a purchase order. An invoice sent at this stage looks presumptuous, and a checkout link isn’t something they can use yet. A quotation is exactly what their process expects.

The price is still being negotiated

A quote is a fixed offer they can respond to. If they push back on a line, you edit the draft and send a revised quotation. No payment has been requested, so nothing needs cancelling or refunding.

The work is custom

For made-to-order products, engraving, bundles or anything with a setup fee, the customer wants to see exactly what they’re getting before committing. Custom line items on the draft appear on the quotation, so the offer is itemised rather than a single lump sum.

Your price or stock won’t hold forever

A valid-until date protects you. Material costs change, stock runs out, and exchange rates move. Send Invoice quotations are valid for 14 days, which is long enough for a normal approval cycle and short enough that you’re not bound by an old price three months later.

When to send an invoice

The customer has already agreed

Once the terms are settled, send the invoice. The customer gets a branded PDF and a secure Shopify checkout link, and paying completes the draft as an order in your store. Your usual receipts, packing slips and fulfilment follow on from there.

It’s a repeat or phone order

For a wholesale customer placing their regular order, or a phone order where they’ve already told you what they want, a quotation adds a step nobody needs. Go straight to the invoice.

The customer has payment terms

If a B2B customer is on terms such as Net 30, the invoice should show the real due date rather than a generic one. Send Invoice can read Shopify payment terms and print the actual due date on the document.

What a good quotation includes

Whatever tool you use, a quotation should have:

1. A clear title: “Quotation”, not “Invoice”, so nobody pays it by mistake or files it as a bill.
2. Its own number, so you can refer to it in emails and on the eventual invoice.
3. Issue date and valid-until date.
4. Itemised lines, including custom items, with quantities, unit prices and discounts.
5. A quoted total with tax shown the same way the invoice will show it.
6. Terms: payment terms, delivery lead time, and what happens after acceptance.
7. Your branding, matching your invoices, so the quote and the bill that follows clearly belong together.

Why quotations need their own number series

We learned this one while building quotation sending. Our first version took quotation numbers from the store’s invoice sequence. That meant every quote used up an invoice number, and a quote that was never accepted left a gap in the invoices. It also printed the invoice prefix on a document that wasn’t an invoice. We changed it so quotations don’t touch the invoice sequence. If your accountant expects invoice numbers without gaps, and in many countries tax rules require it, make sure your quoting tool does the same.

Sending draft order quotations and invoices with Send Invoice

Coming soon. Draft order invoices and quotations are not in Send Invoice yet. This is how they will work when they launch.

Send Invoice adds a Draft Orders tab next to Orders, with its own Sync drafts button. The list shows each draft’s number, created date, customer, status, item count, subtotal, discount and total. Custom line items are tagged Custom item, and product images appear on catalogue lines.

Open a draft and choose how to present it:

• Quotation: a branded offer with a valid-until date and a quoted total.
• Invoice: a branded bill with a secure Shopify checkout link.

You can preview or download the PDF of either one without sending anything, which is useful for attaching to your own email thread or printing for a trade show. Both use the same template library as your order invoices, receipts and packing slips, so the whole sale looks consistent. A draft that has already become an order is marked Already an order so it can’t be quoted or invoiced twice.

See how draft order invoices and quotations will work.

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Related: Why invoices are important for Shopify stores · Draft order invoices and quotations · Why invoice delivery matters · Why track vendor commission