Welcome ConnectWise users!

Thank you for your interest in migrating from the ConnectWise written QuoteWerks Addon to the QuoteWerks built-in ConnectWise integration.

Executive Summary - "In a nutshell"

1. The QuoteWerks built-in integration available.
2. What is required and what does it cost?
3. How is it better than the ConnectWise written QuoteWerks Addon?
4. How to switch/migrate between integrations?

The QuoteWerks built-in integration is available. Find out more about the integration.

The QuoteWerks built-in integration is included in the QuoteWerks Corporate Edition. No extra modules are required.

ConnectWise Panel Findings - How is the built-in link better?
Shortly after the ConnectWise Summit, Aspire Technologies formed a ConnectWise Panel for the purposes of finding out what the diverse ConnectWise Community needed in their ConnectWise to QuoteWerks integration.

The ConnectWise written QuoteWerks Addon was very well received in the beginning. With the integration, they now had the ability to select a ConnectWise contact to Quote to, it would schedule activities in ConnectWise, it would create opportunities in ConnectWise, and it would create product definitions in ConnectWise.

1. The ConnectWise fat client needed to be running and QuoteWerks also needed to be running. ConnectWise users would sometimes experience problems like the fat client freezing requiring a restart of the ConnectWise fat client.
    

   Solution: With our new integration, only QuoteWerks needs to be running. QuoteWerks communicates directly with the ConnectWise web services proprietary and partner APIs.

    

2. Every time they started a new quote, the ConnectWise link would populate the quote with the last used contact which often was not the contact they wanted. This was a well intentioned feature that turned out to not be so favored in the community.
    

   Solution: The QuoteWerks integration does not do this.

   
    

3. When associating a quote with a ConnectWise Opportunity, the user would be presented with a search screen listing every Opportunity in ConnectWise rather than limiting the list to the opportunities for the relevant company. This obviously required that the user run a search to find only the opportunities for the current company by retyping the company name..
    

   Solution: When associating a quote with an existing ConnectWise opportunity, QuoteWerks presents the user only with a list of opportunities for the quoted contact.

    

4. If you wanted to attach the quote to a new Opportunity, you would have to create a new Opportunity from the search screen and while creating that new Opportunity you of course would need to select the company the Opportunity was for during which you could accidentally choose the wrong company.
    

   Solution: QuoteWerks now automatically creates the new opportunity for your and associates the new opportunity with the quoted contact.

    

5. Forecast Lines. The ConnectWise link would only create a single forecast line of a single type for the entire quote regardless if the quote items were a mixture of product, service, managed services, or other.
    

   Solution: The QuoteWerks integration forecasts products, services, managed services, and other separately as separate forecast lines on the same opportunity.  Even when multiple quotes are attached to the same opportunity, QuoteWerks will still create separate forecast lines for each forecast type.

    

6. Product Creation. Since the ConnectWise link lumped all of the item types into one item forecast type, it would incorrectly create product definitions for service, managed service, and other types under the products tab. Along similar lines, it would not create service items under the services tab.
    

   Solution: The QuoteWerks integration only creates products under the products tab for product type items. Service type items are created under the services tab.

    

7. Recurring Items. The ConnectWise link required the user to manually specify the recurring portion of the quote total.
    

   Solution: Recurring Revenue is now fully incorporated into QuoteWerks line items. When, items in the quote that are flagged as recurring are sent over to the ConnectWise opportunity, the recurring details such as amount, billing cycle, and start and end dates flow seamlessly into ConnectWise.

QuoteWerks Promotes Automation
When the QuoteWerks integration introduced the ability to forecast products, services, managed services, and other separately as separate forecast lines on the same opportunity, a way was needed to identify which quote items would flow into which forecast type. Rather than require the ConnectWise user to manually specify the forecast types (highly prone to error), we opted to create a mapping system through which all items automatically funnel into the appropriate forecast type.

Imagine if you had 10, 20, or even 50 lines on a quote and had to manually specify if 10 of the items scattered amongst the quote were managed services, 10 were products and 5 were services. This greatly increases the chance for error and is extremely time consuming. What happens when you hire a new person? How would they know how to categorize each item?

How to switch between integrations

Basic Overview
It is easy to switch between the ConnectWise written and QuoteWerks built-in integrations.

Basically, just install the QuoteWerks update, disable the ConnectWise written integration in ConnectWise, create an API integrator login in ConnectWise, and in QuoteWerks choose ConnectWise as the default contact manager. To switch back, just do the reverse!

Details
For step-by-step details on how to turn off the ConnectWise written QuoteWerks Addon, read this PDF section from the QuoteWerks User Manual. If you have questions on how to accomplish this, please feel free to contact QuoteWerks Technical Support.