Buying and booking
Asking for a quote
For work that is not in the catalogue: what to say, when you will hear, and what accepting one does.
On this page
Some work has no list price: a piece of consultancy scoped to your school, a package across several services, something out of the ordinary. For those, ask for a quote.
Asking
Start at Request a quote. You choose the service area, describe what you need, and say when you need it by. Some catalogue items are priced by quote rather than by a figure, and their pages carry the same form with the item already filled in.
Say what you are trying to achieve rather than what you think you want to buy. A service lead who knows the problem can often answer with something cheaper than the thing you asked for.
What happens
The request goes to the service area you chose, and a clock starts. Response times are on the support page, and how quickly each team answers is something City Council reports on internally, so the clock is not decorative.
You get an alert when there is an answer. Everything is on your quotes page: what you asked, what came back, the figure, and the date the figure holds until.
Accepting
Accepting a quote turns it into an order on the terms in the quote. You are shown the net, the VAT and the gross before you confirm, and the same spending rules apply as anywhere else: over your cap, it becomes a request for a School Admin rather than a refusal. See permissions and spending caps.
Declining, or letting it lapse
You can decline, which tells the service area and closes it tidily. You can also do nothing, and the quote lapses on the date it says. Neither is held against you and neither needs a reason, though a sentence about why helps a team price better next time.
Asking again
A lapsed or declined quote can be asked for again from the same form. Prices move, so a figure from last March is a guide rather than a promise.
A quote is not a conversation
If what you have is a question rather than a piece of work, the help bubble is faster and does not put a clock on anybody. Quotes are for things you intend to buy.
Not what you were after?
Ask City Council in the bubble at the corner of any page, or open your help conversation in full. It is one conversation that never closes, so there is nothing to raise and no subject line to invent.