A Purchase Order (PO) issued by the company
A signed quote (the quote that we send)
An e-mail agreement (“we accept the quote/subscription/etc”) or any other written statement
Do NOT invoice before feature/work is completed.
Feature is requested by customer
Sales creates issue in issue tracker that links to the email (tags: company name, feature, estimate) and, if needed, mentions in agenda. Issue is assigned to sales milestone
Dev makes estimate/gives feedback
Estimate: between x and y hours (if it takes much time to do an estimate and we doubt if the customer will order)
Quote: x number of hours (in all other cases)
Sales communicates estimate to customer
Repeat 3 and 4 in case of a range estimate
If customer agrees with estimate and feedback, then:
Add estimate and order to the hourly tab of the Sales sheet
Sales removes estimate label and adds promised label
Sales adds comment on milestone and context of developer agreeing on the milestone, changes milestone in the issue
Adds the issue name and link to the feature in the deal
If customer does not commit in a reasonable time, issue is marked as closed and sales follows up through the deal
If feature will not be done, sales marks issue as closed
Once feature is delivered, adds number of hours spent in the deal, sales announces customer, closes feature with link to email
Sales adds the real number of hours spent to the sales sheet
Sales invoices customer for the quoted number of hours
Deal is marked won
Implicit handover between sales and finance is sending the invoice (Sytse)
Customer contacts sales for consultancy work
Sales sends email to support@ with details and time estimate
Support will OTB (OK to book) or ask for more information
If more information is needed sales will ask it and add to the Zendesk ticket
If OTB and customer agrees with the estimate, sales will ask the customer to contact support@ for booking time and adds to the sales sheet 'Hourly' as quoted
After ordering, sales marks deal as won and amends sales sheet
If, during the call, the time allocated on the quote is exceeded, the Support Engineer will inform the client that they are going overtime, and that all overtime will be invoiced to the client at normal consultancy rate
If an unforeseen GitLab bug needs to be fixed in order to address the consultancy request, the Support Engineer will inform the client that GitLab B.V. will make the fix, and that the additional hours spent will be invoiced to the client at normal consultancy rate
If the work is finished or the client decides to stop the consultancy process, support logs the hours spent in the ‘Hourly’ sales sheet, column “Realized” and informs sales via email or Highrise
Support notifies customer via Zendesk that Sales will be in touch with them
Sales creates invoice corresponding to the number of hours in the “Realized” column