Where the content of the offer PDF comes from
An offer PDF consists of standard pages that Eturnity maintains for all customers and of your own pages. You change what is on them in three places:
In the project, for a single offer: texts in the preview, the pages of the offer, branding and address, and all project data such as prices, components and customer details. Anyone who edits the project can do this.
In the settings, for all of your company's offers: logo and colours, in the new PDF design also the cover image, your own pages if your licence includes them, and fixed page sequences. Only users with administrator rights may do this.
At Eturnity: fixed texts, layout and font of the standard pages, the defaults for the salutation, offer text and remarks, the VAT rates, currency and number format, as well as your company name and your addresses.
There are two designs for the offer PDF, the previous one and the new one; where they differ, this article points it out. In the settings, under Document templates, you can see which design a document template uses: templates in the new design show “Multilingual” instead of a language. Eturnity enables the new design for your company.
A change only reaches the offer PDF when the PDF is created again: in the next preview and the next time you click Download PDF (previous version of the page: Generate PDF). Three things do not arrive by themselves even then: a changed document template in variants in which it is already used, changed customer details in the salutation and offer text, and a new default from Eturnity for the texts from the preview. How to apply them is described in the sections below. A PDF that has already been created no longer changes, not even in the File manager. The PDF in an active Online offer also stays as it was on activation; for a new one, withdraw the Online offer and activate it again.
In the project: changing a single offer
Texts, pages, branding and address apply per variant: each variant has its own offer. What you change there in one variant changes neither the other variants nor your company's settings. The details on the Customer page and in the Project settings, by contrast, apply to all variants of the project. To open the offer: open the project and the variant you want > in the left side menu, the Offer group > Offers.
Editing texts in the preview
You rewrite three texts of the offer PDF directly in the preview: the salutation and the offer text on the offer overview (in the previous PDF design, in the German standard templates on the page “Ihr Persönliches Angebot”, and with the same text also on the order confirmation) and the remarks below the cost table (in the new PDF design, below the table of optional components if the offer contains any).
If you have changed anything on the Offers page, click Save first.
Click Preview PDF (previous version: Preview). The page moves to the Preview PDF and edit text step; for variants with photovoltaics without a 3D Panel layout, the preview opens in a new browser tab instead. If the button is still locked after saving, there is no page in the Page order, or the financing or, for photovoltaics, the simulation is no longer up to date. You recalculate an out-of-date simulation with Update in the note on the page.
In the preview, click into the text you want to change: into the salutation, into the offer text or into the “Remarks:” field below the cost table, for optional components below their table. A toolbar appears at the field. Write your text; “Remarks:” is only a placeholder that you can add to, overwrite or delete.
Click the tick in the toolbar or simply click next to the field; both save the text. Wait until saving has finished before you download the PDF.
A text changed in the preview applies to the offer of this variant in the project's correspondence language (Correspondence language field in the Project settings); a duplicated variant takes over the pages, branding and address, but starts again with your company's default for these texts. The salutation and offer text are created once, when you open the Offers page or the preview in the variant for the first time, and do not take over later changes to the customer details. If the salutation is wrong, correct the details on the Customer page, then click into the salutation in the preview and click “Reset” in the toolbar: this resets the text to the default, filled in with the current data. The preview has no other text fields: the remaining texts come from the project data or are fixed.
Putting the pages together
Which pages the offer contains and in which order is set on the Offers page in the Offer settings step:
Under Select template, choose a document template; with Add document template, you add the pages of another one. Do this before any other changes: if you choose a different template or remove one in a saved project, Expert rebuilds the page order; pages added by hand are removed, only data sheets stay and move to the end. As long as you have not saved, Cancel brings back the previous order.
Under Page order, use Add page to add standard pages or your own pages, for example your terms and conditions, and Add data sheet to add data sheets. An administrator first creates your own pages in the settings under Custom pages, if your licence includes them. Drag a page to change the order; you remove a page with the bin icon.
Click Save.
There is no switch that hides the unit prices in the offer PDF. Instead, open the selection in the row of the cost page and choose the page without unit prices: in the new PDF design “07 System: detailed costs (no price)”, in the previous design, in the German standard templates, “05b Detailkosten Übersicht”; it still shows the total costs.
Reset to template resets the pages to those of the selected templates, as the templates are saved today; here too, pages added by hand are removed, only data sheets stay.
Choosing branding and address
On the Offers page, in the Offer settings step, you choose in the Details section the Branding of the offer and the Address of your company or branch that appears in it. Then click Save. Without a selection, and likewise with Default branding, the branding that is currently set as the default in the settings applies.
Only Eturnity maintains the addresses themselves, your company name and each user's branch; here you only choose which address appears. By default, the phone and email in the contact details of the PDF are those of the project manager: their Work phone and their Email from the Account settings, which each user opens via the profile icon on the right of the header and maintains themselves. Choosing a different address therefore usually does not change them. If you change the Project manager in the Project settings, Expert resets the address in all variants to the new project manager's branch or the main address. Check the address in each variant afterwards.
Prices, components and project data
Figures and details in the PDF come from the project. You change them where they originate:
Items, quantities, prices and discounts: in the Bill of materials in the Offer group. There you also make items optional and, if your licence includes it, combine them into collective positions; whether their sub positions and prices appear in the PDF is controlled in the details of the collective position.
Which VAT rates the offer uses: in the Project settings under VAT treatment. The rates themselves are set up by Eturnity.
Regular services such as a maintenance contract: on the Recurring costs page, also in the Offer group. A leasing model: on the Financing page in the Financials group.
Modules, inverters and other main components: in the Design group, for example in the 3D Panel layout and on the Inverter page. Then update the simulation; only then are the key figures in the PDF correct, and for photovoltaics Expert locks the PDF buttons until the simulation has been recalculated.
Your customer's name, address and contact details: on the Customer page.
The Project reference in the footer and the Project manager: in the Project settings. The variant name that appears at the top of every standard page in the new PDF design: on the Variants page.
In the settings: for all offers
What is to apply to all of your company's offers is set by users with administrator rights in the settings: in the header, open the app launcher on the far left > Settings > in the left side menu, the Offer section.
Branding: logo, colours and, in the new PDF design, the cover image. The logo and cover image take effect as soon as they are uploaded, the name and colours only after Save. The next preview of every offer with this branding shows the change.
Custom pages: If your licence includes this, you turn a PDF file of your own into a page for your offers, for example your terms and conditions or payment terms with your bank details; your bank details do not appear on any standard page. Expert prints neither a logo nor a header or footer on these pages; so design the file completely yourself, for the new PDF design in A4 portrait. An uploaded file cannot be replaced: for a new version, create a new page and put it in place of the old one.
Document templates: fixed page sequences that your team applies in the project with Select template; a new offer starts with the Default template if its pages match the technologies of the variant. Changing a template does not change the variants in which it is already used. There, you apply the changed template in the project on the Offers page with Reset to template; pages added by hand are removed in the process. You can only include your own pages in templates in the previous PDF design; in the new one, your team adds them in the project.
How to set up these three settings step by step is described in the article “Setting up your offer PDF”.
What only Eturnity changes
Some things in the offer PDF cannot be set in Eturnity Expert, not even with administrator rights:
fixed texts of the standard pages, such as page titles, headings, column texts and footnotes, and the default for the salutation, offer text and remarks; a new default applies to texts created after it, and you reset an existing text to it in the preview with “Reset”;
the layout: the structure of the pages, header and footer, and page format;
the size of the area for your logo: Eturnity sets up a larger area for each branding without changing the pages themselves; Support tells you in advance whether this costs anything;
font, font sizes and the fixed colours of text and lines;
your company name, your company and branch addresses and each user's branch;
the VAT rates themselves, the currency, the number format and the rounding; you choose which VAT rates a project uses in the Project settings under VAT treatment;
standard pages that your company is missing, and enabling the new PDF design, which costs nothing.
In the first 30 days after your account is activated, counted from the moment you start using Eturnity, text changes on existing pages that do not alter the layout or structure, and small adjustments such as a different font, are free of charge; after that, they are chargeable. Eturnity implements new pages that do not exist as standard, and changes to layout or design, as a Premium Customization, billed according to effort. If Eturnity changes the layout or a fixed text of a page, the page usually becomes a separate version for your company and no longer receives later improvements to the standard page; only the defaults of the texts from the preview are changed by Eturnity without copying the page. Support tells you the price before anything is implemented; more on this in the article “Customising your PDFs”. Write to Eturnity Support with what you would like to change: by email at support@eturnity.com or in the chat.