Quotes
B2B Edition sales quotes are individualized offers requested by buyers and curated by sales representatives. The Quotes Storefront API allows you to perform sales quote-related actions from the perspective of a buyer, such as viewing quote information, requesting new quotes, sending in-quote messages, and taking quotes to the checkout page.
After a buyer requests a quote, you can use the Quotes Server to Server API (opens in a new tab) to modify the quote with:
- Custom line item pricing and discounts, which can be optionally hidden from the recipient
- Offering custom products, catalog-only items, or items that are currently out of stock for typical checkouts
- Bespoke shipping methods for the large/unusual orders placed by B2B clients
- Expiration dates to ensure the quote is purchased in a given time period
Buyer Permissions
When performing tasks via the Quotes Storefront API from the perspective of a Company user, their user account must have the necessary permissions (opens in a new tab) enabled to authorize the request. Additionally, the levels assigned to permissions like Get quotes and Get quote detail determine whether a request can return information on the user's quotes or on all quotes in the Company account.
Note: The Quotes Storefront API currently does not support Account Hierarchy (opens in a new tab), and the endpoints cannot be used to manage sales quotes in child Company accounts.
See the table below for the minimum Company permissions required for each endpoint.
| Endpoint | Get quotes | Get quote detail | Create quote | Update quote message | Checkout with quote | Get quote pdf |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Get All Quotes | ✓ | |||||
| Create a Quote | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |||
| Get Quote Details | ✓ | ✓ | ||||
| Send a Quote Message | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |||
| Generate Cart and Checkout URL for a Quote | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |||
| Assign a Quote to a BigCommerce Order | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |||
| Get Quote Configs | ||||||
| Get Quote Store Info | ||||||
| Send a Quote Email | ✓ | |||||
| Export a Quote PDF | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Custom Items
Non-purchasable products are added to sales quotes as custom items. These differ from custom products, which are created while editing a quote from the B2B Edition control panel. To learn more about the differences between custom products and custom items, see Order Management and Sales Representative Functions (Help Center) (opens in a new tab).
Buyers can request non-purchasable products in a quote if your store meets the following prerequisites:
- Your store must use the Buyer Portal experience.
- You must enable buyers to add custom items from Settings › Quotes in your B2B Edition control panel.
- Custom shipping must also be enabled in order to add shipping methods and rates to the quote.
For information on enabling custom items, see B2B Edition Settings (Help Center) (opens in a new tab).
Quote Statuses
Sales quotes have seven different statuses corresponding to the different parts of a quote's life cycle.
Each status is assigned a numeric ID, which appears in the status field of the response body when using the Get All Quotes and Get Quote Details endpoints. You can also use a quote's status as a parameter of the Get All Quotes endpoint in order to filter for quotes in a specific status.
The Quotes Storefront API uses the buyer-facing quote status , as opposed to the internal statuses (opens in a new tab) that are visible to your staff. See the table below for information on each quote status, as well as its corresponding status code.
| Status Name | Description | Status ID |
|---|---|---|
| Open | The quote has not been purchased and is not expired. | 1 |
| Ordered | The quote was purchased from the storefront or manually converted into an order. | 4 |
| Expired | The quote was not purchased before its expiration date. | 5 |