How to send a quote from a Shopify draft order

Create the offer as a Shopify draft order. Add the customer, products, quantities, discounts, shipping, and tax, then save it. Shopify can email a payment invoice or checkout link, but that is a payment request. If you need a printable quote with validity and terms, generate a quote PDF from the draft order and share it separately.

What belongs in the Shopify draft order?

The draft order should contain every value the customer is being asked to approve. That includes the customer, line items, quantities, custom prices, discounts, shipping, and applicable tax. Shopify also lets you assign a market and currency.

For Shopify B2B, a draft can carry the company location and purchase order number. Company pricing and payment terms can flow into the draft. You can also lock product prices when the quoted price must survive a later catalog change. Shopify documents these options in its B2B draft-order guide.

Check the draft before you turn it into anything customer-facing. A PDF only makes a mistake look more official.

How do you create the draft order in Shopify?

Create it from Orders, then Drafts, then Create order in Shopify admin.

1. Add the products and quantities.
2. Set custom prices, discounts, shipping, and tax where needed.
3. Add the customer and check the market and currency.
4. Add any note, tags, purchase order number, or payment terms that belong with the sale.
5. Save the draft.

Shopify’s draft-order documentation also covers phone, email, in-person, and negotiated wholesale orders. The draft remains editable until it becomes an order.

Is Shopify’s draft-order invoice the same as a quote?

No. Shopify’s draft-order invoice is an email with a checkout link. The customer can enter billing details, choose an available shipping method, and pay. Once payment completes, Shopify turns the draft into an order.

That route is enough when the customer is ready to pay. Shopify’s current path is Payments, then Send invoice. Its sending guide also warns against marking the draft paid before the customer uses the link, because the checkout link will stop working.

A quote does a different job. It puts the proposed items, price, validity date, and terms into a document the customer can review before payment. Shopify supplies the draft-order data. A quote app supplies the separate document.

How does Docket turn the draft into a PDF quote?

Docket generates a quote from an enabled Shopify draft-order event. The quote captures the current draft values and uses the logo, seller details, validity days, and free-text terms saved in Docket’s settings.

The generated PDF and HTML stay as stored versions. If you change the draft and generate another quote, the new version does not overwrite the earlier PDF. That gives you the document that was sent at each stage of the negotiation, not a page rebuilt from today’s draft.

Open the stored quote under Documents and share its hosted link with the customer. Docket does not email the quote, collect approval, or enforce the printed expiration date. You handle the send and record the customer’s decision yourself.

See Shopify quotes in Docket for the current product behavior and sample output.

What happens when the customer accepts the quote?

Return to the Shopify draft order and use Shopify’s payment path. You can send the checkout invoice, take payment in Shopify admin, or mark the draft paid after receiving payment another way. The accepted draft then becomes a regular Shopify order.

If invoices are enabled in Docket, the resulting order event can generate the invoice separately. The quote is still the pre-sale proposal. The invoice records the completed sale. The broader Shopify invoice guide explains that boundary.

What should you check before sending the quote?

Check the customer name, company, currency, line prices, discounts, shipping, tax, validity date, and terms against the draft. Open the hosted link once before sending it. If the offer changes, update the Shopify draft and generate a new quote version instead of editing an old PDF.

One retention limit matters. Docket keeps the stored quote while the app remains installed. Uninstalling Docket deletes the archive. The getting-started guide explains how document generation and storage work.

If you need a stored PDF quote rather than Shopify’s checkout invoice, Docket includes quotes in its Unlimited subscription. It is $9.99 USD monthly or $99.99 USD annually, with a Shopify-native 14-day trial and zero usage metering. Start with the quote page.