The customer reads a copy frozen at the moment you sent it. Now the content half of that copy follows the estimate: it is rebuilt and pushed to every unapproved link on the job, only when something actually changed, with every markup built into the prices they read. Your visibility switches and plans stay as you set them, and an optional add-on the customer already chose is carried into every refresh and every re-quote. Approval is a hard stop — an approved page is never rewritten. One system for the quote and the customer's page, so a post-frame builder never has to wonder which copy the customer is holding.
Also called: portal shows the old price · added services and they didn't show · quote out of date on their page
Fix the quote and the customer's page fixes itself
A builder added services to a sent estimate and the customer's page showed none of them — the buyer was reading $37,246 while the builder was looking at $48,814, because the page had been frozen at send and nothing ever wrote to it again. Edits to services, notes, labour, markup, colours and payment terms push into the customer's copy as you save. A quote that silently disagrees with itself is worse than no quote.
You add a concrete pad and a customer note to a quote that already went out, and the buyer spends the rest of the week holding you to a total that is eleven thousand dollars light.
A customer who catches two different numbers stops trusting both. Pushing a rebuilt copy beats letting the page add its own numbers, because its totals are stored figures — and it waits until you've stopped editing, so a half-finished figure never lands in front of them.
Correcting a quote no longer means sending a second link
The copy is refreshed where it stands, because sending again mints a different address and orphans the one already sitting in the buyer's inbox. The estimate they were sent is the estimate that updates. Two live links for one job is how a customer approves the wrong number.
Correcting one line meant sending a second link, and now the buyer's inbox holds two live quotes for the same building with nothing to say which one you meant.
Two live links for one job is how a customer approves the wrong number. The address they already have is the one rewritten, so the bookmark, the email forwarded to a spouse and the tab open at the site all land on the current document.
It stops the moment they approve
An approved page is never rewritten. From that point the document is the record of what was agreed, and a price change is a change order rather than an edit nobody can see. The refusal lives where the writing happens, not in each screen that might trigger one.
A customer approves a figure, an edit lands a week later, and now nobody can say which number was actually agreed to.
What a customer approved has to stay exactly what they approved. The stop sits at the one place the copy gets rewritten, so no button added later can step around it — and after that, moving the price is a change order they sign again.
A refresh never takes back what the customer added
Try itOn a SmartBuild-priced estimate a customer can add an optional line on their own page — the 40′ × 40′ approach, +$13,650.00. Every refresh from your side applies their picks again and works the total out as the base plus what they chose, so fixing a note on Thursday can't quietly drop the approach they said yes to on Tuesday. Send a new link on the same job and the picks ride along to it too.
The customer adds the approach on Sunday, you fix a typo on Monday, and the $13,650 disappears off their page without either of you noticing.
A customer who said yes to something should never have to say it twice. Keeping their picks through every refresh protects the bigger sale and the customer's trust in the page.
What you decided they can see survives every refresh
A refresh updates prices, specs, services and colours, and deliberately leaves your visibility switches and attached plans alone. Those are your decisions, they belong to the link, and a refresh that quietly switched a hidden section back on would be a leak, not an update.
The labour breakdown you deliberately kept off a price-shopper's page comes back the next time you fix a typo in a note.
Hiding a section is a decision about this buyer, not content to regenerate. Prices, specs, services and colours get rewritten; the switches and drawings don't — so the labour line you kept off a price-shopper's page never comes back because you fixed a typo.
When two copies exist, the right one wins by comparison
Pin a version and that one always wins. Otherwise the genuinely fresher of the two is served, compared by when each was actually rebuilt — and a customer opening their page does not count as a rebuild. A reader must never change which document is the real one.
Two copies of the same quote are in play, the customer opens the older one, and you spend Friday explaining a price you corrected on Tuesday.
A reader must never change which document is the real one. Freshness is settled by when each copy was last rebuilt, not last opened — so a buyer opening his page can't promote the stale copy — and pinning a version overrides it when he has to hold one exact document.
- 1Edit the sent estimate — a service, a note, the labour, the markup, the colours, the terms.
- 2The customer's copy is rebuilt and pushed to the link they already have.
- 3It fires only when something actually changed, and it waits for you to stop typing.
- 4Add-ons the customer chose are applied to every refresh and to a re-quote, and the total is worked out as the base plus their picks.
- 5The moment they approve, it stops — the document becomes the record of what was agreed.
- 6Your visibility switches and attached plans belong to the link and survive every refresh.
A builder added $11,568 of services and two customer notes to an estimate that had already gone out, and the customer's page showed none of it — a $37,246 quote sitting against a $48,814 estimate. Having the customer's page recalculate live was turned down on purpose: that page is public and its totals are stored figures, so a live read would list line items that do not add up to the total printed under them. One copy, kept current, keeps the document honest with itself. Once customers could add optional extras on their own page, the copy had two authors. A refresh from the builder's side must never erase what the customer said yes to — so every refresh, and every new link on the same job, applies their picks and totals the page as the base plus what they chose.
- A frozen customer document drifting away from the estimate behind it
- Line items on a public page that don't add up to the total printed under them
- A builder's refresh erasing an add-on the customer chose
Which copy the customer actually gets
There can be two candidates: the newest version you sent, and the link's own refreshed copy. A deliberate pin beats both. With nothing ever sent, the link's copy is used. It never errors out — the customer's page always renders something.