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Draft Proposals and Quotes With AI

By the end of this recipe, a rep clicks one button on a deal and — seconds later — a complete proposal document, quote table included, is drafted from the deal's own data and waiting for review. Because your pipeline, your pricing, and your documents all live in one workspace, the AI writes from the real deal instead of a blank template, and a person still signs off before anything reaches the client.

Readiness: Available now (built as an Automation). The version where a named sales teammate watches the pipeline and drafts proposals on its own is rolling out in early access.

What it does​

Proposals are where good deals stall. The information is all there — the company, the contact, what they need, which package fits, the numbers — but assembling it into a clean document is an hour of copy-paste a rep does at the end of a long day. This recipe collapses that hour into a click.

When a rep marks a deal ready and clicks Draft Proposal on its row, the automation:

  • Checks the deal has what it needs — a package, line items, and a computed total — and nudges the rep if something's missing.
  • Writes the proposal from the deal's context: the company and contact, the scope you agreed on, the proposed solution, a formatted quote table, terms, and next steps.
  • Creates a Copera document from that draft — a real document the rep can edit, comment on, export to PDF, or share.
  • Marks the deal Ready for review, stamps the drafted date, and notifies the deal owner that their proposal is ready.

The quote numbers come from the board, not the AI: line items and a formula column compute the subtotal, tax, and total, and the AI simply formats them into the document. So the math is always right, and the rep starts from a finished draft instead of a blank page — then reviews, tweaks, and sends.

Build it yourself​

Set up the deals board​

Give each deal the fields a proposal needs

On your sales pipeline board, make sure every deal row carries the raw material for a proposal: Company, Contact, an owner (an assigned user), the agreed scope or needs (a rich-text field the rep fills during discovery), a Selected package, and a Proposal status field with options like Not started, Ready for review, Approved, and Sent. See Boards Overview if you're starting fresh.

Add the pricing that becomes the quote

Add the numbers the quote is built from. The simplest setup: Quantity and Unit price columns plus a formula column that computes the Total (add a second formula for tax if you need it). For multi-line quotes, keep line items as linked rows in their own table and roll their totals up onto the deal. Either way, the board does the arithmetic — the AI only formats it.

Place a Draft Proposal button on the row

Add a manual action button labeled Draft Proposal to the deal. This is the trigger the rep clicks when a deal is ready — it puts the rep in control of when a proposal is drafted, instead of firing on every deal automatically.

Build the automation​

Trigger: Manual action button

In Automations, add a Manual action button trigger tied to the Draft Proposal button. The automation now runs on demand for whichever deal the rep clicked. (Prefer it automatic? Swap in a Field changed trigger that fires when Deal stage changes to Proposal — see the tip below.)

Condition: Make sure the deal is ready

Add a condition (a row filter) that only continues when the deal has a Selected package and a Total greater than zero. Connect the false branch to a Send notification action that tells the rep what's missing — "Add a package and pricing before drafting." No one wants a proposal with a blank quote.

AI step: Write the proposal and quote

On the true branch, add an AI → Generate step that drafts the proposal from the deal's fields — company, contact, agreed scope, selected package, and the formula-computed total and line items. Prompt it for structure: "Write a proposal with a short cover note, our understanding of their needs, the proposed solution and scope, a quote table built from these line items and total, terms, and next steps. Professional, concise, in our voice."

Action: Create the proposal document

Add a Create document action and map the AI step's output into the document body. This turns the draft into a real Copera document — one the rep can edit, comment on, export to PDF, or share. Name it from the deal, like "Proposal — Acme Co." (Prefer to keep the draft on the deal itself? Write it into the row's rich-text body instead — see Tips.)

Action: Mark it ready and stamp the date

Add a Set field action to move Proposal status → Ready for review, and a Set date to now action on a Proposal drafted date so you can see how fast drafts turn around.

Action: Notify the owner

Add a Send notification (or Send direct message) to the deal's owner: "📄 Your proposal is drafted and ready to review." Include a link to the new document so they're one click from editing it.

tip

Want it to fire automatically? Instead of the Draft Proposal button, trigger on Field changed when Deal stage moves to Proposal. Every deal that advances to the proposal stage gets a draft waiting for the rep — no click required. Keep the "is it ready?" condition so half-filled deals don't produce empty quotes.

Or just ask Copera AI​

You don't have to assemble the graph by hand. Open Ask Copera AI and describe it:

"Create a Deals board with columns for company, contact, deal stage, agreed scope, a selected package, quantity, unit price, a formula column for the total, and a proposal status. Add a 'Draft Proposal' button to each deal, then build an automation: when I click it, use AI to write a proposal and quote from the deal's fields and total, create a document from the draft, set the deal's proposal status to 'Ready for review,' and send me a notification with a link to the document."

Ask Copera AI can create the board and its columns, then assemble the automation for you. With the default Ask before acting permission mode, it shows a review card for each change before anything is created — so you approve the board setup and the automation before they exist. See What Copera AI Can Do for the full list of actions it can take.

You can also draft a one-off proposal on the spot, without building anything: "Draft a proposal for the Acme deal on our Sales Pipeline board — use its scope, package, and total." Ask Copera AI reads the deal and writes the draft right in the conversation.

Make it a standing teammate​

Early access

Standing AI teammates are rolling out gradually. When one reaches your workspace, a named "Proposal Writer" teammate can watch the pipeline itself: the moment a deal is marked ready, it drafts the proposal document from the deal's data and leaves it for review — on its own, under its own identity. A teammate can create and update documents but can't send anything outside your workspace, so a person always sends the final proposal to the client. Until then, the automation above does exactly this today — everything here can be built now as an Automation. Learn more about AI teammates.

Tips​

tip

Keep the review step for anything the client sees. Draft into a document first; let a rep edit and send. The AI does the assembling — the numbers, the scope, the structure — but a human still owns the final word that goes out under your name.

tip

Let the board do the math. Put every price in a column and compute totals with a formula (or roll up linked line items). The AI formats the quote table from those values, so a discount or a quantity change updates the total on the board and the next draft is automatically correct — the AI never invents a number.

tip

Send it on approval — safely. To close the loop, add a second automation with a Field changed trigger on Proposal status → Approved. Give it a Send or draft email action in draft mode (or a Human approval step) so the proposal is teed up to the client but a person still hits send. Nothing leaves the workspace unreviewed.

tip

Feed the AI your template and tone. Paste your standard proposal structure and boilerplate — sections, guarantees, terms — into the AI Generate step's prompt. You get consistent, on-brand proposals every time, with only the deal-specific parts changing.

Frequently Asked Questions​

Can Copera AI write a sales proposal automatically?​

Yes. An Automation generates a full proposal document from a deal's data — the company, contact, agreed scope, selected package, and the total — the moment a rep clicks a Draft Proposal button on the deal. It lands as a Copera document marked ready for review, so a person edits and sends it. Nothing reaches the client without a human approving it first.

Where does the drafted proposal end up?​

In a new Copera document created from the deal's fields, with the deal's status set to Ready for review and the owner notified. You open the document, edit anything, and send it — export it to PDF or share it straight from Copera.

Can it build the price quote and calculate totals?​

Yes. The pricing lives on the deal — line items with quantity and unit price, and a formula column that computes the subtotal, tax, and total. The AI step formats those numbers into a clean quote table inside the proposal, so the math comes from your board, not from the AI.

Does the proposal get sent to the client automatically?​

No, unless you add that step. The core recipe stops at a draft that's ready for review. You can extend it so that once a rep marks the proposal Approved, a second automation emails it to the client as a draft — a person still hits send — or routes it through an approval step first.

Do I have to build the automation by hand?​

No. Describe it to Ask Copera AI and it creates the Deals board and assembles the automation for you, showing a review card for each change before anything is created.