CODE MONKEYS PROPOSALS – Easily create client proposals from your WordPress admin dashboard

WHY WE BUILT THIS PLUGIN:
The Code Monkeys proposals plugin was initially built for our own web design and development agency to help us create proposals and SOWs much more efficiently.

We wanted a way to create proposal templates for our various services such as partner proposals with other web design and digital marketing agencies, direct client subscription website packages, direct client traditional website builds, SOW addendums, etc.

Our concept was to then allow “placeholders” which we could populate our templated proposals with that we could then replace using simple inputs. By doing this we’re able to fully customize our proposals for our prospective clients in seconds.

While placeholders are great, every proposal we send is tailored specifically for our clients and every project has it’s own unique aspects that need to be called out so we also needed a way to add or change aspects of the template for each proposal we create. Basically the template and the placeholders do 90% of the initial work but we still have the ability to customize other aspects as we see fit.

Finally, once our proposal was complete we needed a way to convert it into a PDF file which we could save and then send to the client (or in our case upload to CudaSign for the client to sign digitally).

WHY WE RELEASED IT FOR FREE TO THE WP COMMUNITY:
We have a saying here, if we want something chances are other people want it too!

We do a lot of “white label” development for other web design and digital marketing agencies and consultants and one thing we ALL seem to struggle with is the administration side of our businesses and ensuring we’re spending more time designing or writing code and less time doing up-front busy work such as writing proposals and SOWs. Figuring out ways to compensate ourselves for time spent on these types of tasks can be a challenge and especially those of us that are newer to this business find ourselves spending hours on this stuff basically unpaid.

Sure, there are some paid services out there to help make this aspect more efficient but we’re all already nickle and dimed to death. Between Adobe Suite, BrowserStack, hosting accounts, project management tools, rent and utilities our overhead adds up quick and one more monthly bill is the one thing we DON’T need! Since we have the chops to build what we need in house we just as well build it ourselves the way we want it and eliminate one more potential cost.

So then, since we figured that we were going to build this for ourselves anyway why not just release it to the WP community? Of course we do have a bit of an ulterior motive for releasing it, it does help push our brand recognition and there’s always the off chance that we might get a project or two from those of you that use it.