Just like your sales workflow, your sales documents have their own lifecycle around your customer. Proposify has a list of proposal statuses that help you see exactly where your document is in relation to the close.

We have two main kinds of document status: Active and Inactive.

Active documents are ones that can still be edited by you and signed/accepted by your prospect, such as drafts, sent, viewed, and awaiting approval.

Inactive documents are ones that can no longer be edited and are considered “closed,” such as won, lost, or archived documents.

Active Documents

Active documents are documents still under negotiation. They count towards your active document limit, which varies depending on your plan. From start to finish, active documents travel through the following four stages:

Draft

Documents in the drafts stage include those you’ve created but have yet to send to your prospects. These are the fresh, brand-spanking-new documents that are just waiting to be sent out.

Internal and Test Sends

If you like to test internally what the document and email will look like to the client, the status will not update from Draft to Sent if our system recognizes the email address in the To field as an internal user:

The document will send to the internal user(s), and the activity feed will show "You/User shared the proposal by email" as the main activity marker, and the document status will remain in Draft:

Sent

Once your document has been sent to your prospect via the send page, it automatically moves from Drafts to Sent. If your document is in the Sent stage, it means that it has been sent to your prospect, but the prospect hasn't seen it yet.

If one of your documents has been in the Sent stage for longer than you anticipated, you can send a gentle reminder to your prospect from the document's Proposal Snapshot page: 

This feature will generate a reminder email using your email templates, giving your prospect a gentle nudge to check out your document.

Viewed

Once your prospect has clicked on the document link, the document will automatically move from Sent to Viewed. You should now be able to look at the document’s prospect view metrics:

This feature allows you to see how many prospects viewed each of your document's sections and for how long. Click here for more information on metrics.

Unsigned

Documents in the Unsigned stage have been signed by your prospect, and are awaiting any pending signatures before moving to Won.

If a document has been Won, or has client signatures attached, it is locked to all edits to protect the validity of the document. In order to make edits to the document, selecting the edit button will result in a pop-up asking you to verify voiding it. This will also notify your client, as it will require them to sign again.

Inactive Documents

Inactive documents are considered Done, whether or not they have been Won or Lost. Both Won and Lost documents are treated the same: all edits are locked, preventing all users from making changes until the documents are restored to active status.

Note: Inactive documents don't count towards your active document limit.

To duplicate a document, click Duplicate at the top right of the Proposal Snapshot page: 

To learn how to manually change the status of your document, click here.

Change Document Status

Sometimes, sending a document email to a prospect simply isn't an option. Maybe they’d rather receive a PDF file instead, or maybe they have specific submission guidelines. In cases like these, when you need to use an alternate delivery method, your document will remain in Draft status.

First, once in your Pipeline, open the Snapshot page by clicking the document you wish to adjust:

Then change the document’s status by clicking the Mark as dropdown menu at the top right of the Snapshot page and select an option: 

This feature helps you manually set the document’s status in situations where delivery automation doesn't suit your prospect. 

Changing your document’s status to Won or Lost will lock it, preventing you from making changes until it’s restored to Draft status.

Check out our Documents Stages and Status pages for more information