How do quotes and bookings differ?

A quote is a price you send a customer for work they haven't committed to; a booking is confirmed work that Orbit turns into real records. A quote only becomes a booking once the customer accepts it.

A booking captures work a customer has committed to. When you submit it in Orbit MissionControl, Orbit creates the real records for that job — an Order, its Shipments, and often a Tour ready to plan or dispatch.

A quote (sometimes called an RFQ, a request for a price) is different: the customer has only asked what the work would cost. You build the quote and send it with the Send Quote action. This emails the customer the price and makes it available in Orbit Hub to book — but it creates no Order, Shipment, or Tour yet.

So the two differ in both the action you take and the outcome:

• A booking — you submit it, and real records are created straight away.

• A quote — you Send Quote, and it waits for the customer's yes or no. Only when the customer accepts does it become a confirmed booking and produce real records.

In Orbit MissionControl the two sit in different sections of the drafts area — bookings-in-progress under Inbox and Drafts, price requests under Quotes — so you can tell at a glance which is which. One point of vocabulary: in Orbit, an Offer means a Callout sent to a carrier in the Marketplace, not a price sent to a customer. A price to a customer is always a quote.

Example

A customer-service agent at Orion Industries in London takes a call from ACME Ltd asking what an overnight run from Paris to Berlin would cost. They fill in the form, choose Send Quote, and ACME receives the price by email — no work is scheduled. Two days later ACME accepts, the quote becomes a booking, and Orbit creates the Order, Shipment, and Tour ready to plan.