Most quoting workflows stumble over the same problem. You send a quote out using one tool, your customer agrees, but then someone sends a separate invoice, and the waiting game starts.
Can you send a quote and collect payment in one document?
Yes, and by now that is the easy part. Every serious proposal tool can take a payment at signing. What separates them is what happens on the cycles after the first one.
How does this look? Once your customer receives their link, they can review the quote, sign it, and make a payment without leaving the page. There's no awkward follow-up, and no "just checking you saw this" email three days later.
Qwilr handles this through QwilrPay, which connects directly to Stripe. Once the buyer accepts, they can pay on the spot, directly within the quote or proposal you sent.
Step by step: build a quote clients can sign and pay
Here is how this works in Qwilr.
Step 1: Build the interactive quote or proposal
You can start using a template or build the proposal from scratch. Then add your pricing, what's included, and the basic terms the buyer needs to see before they agree. If you offer a few packages or add-ons, dynamic pricing tables let them choose what they want.
Putting the terms inside the pricing block rather than in an attachment is the part teams tend to skip, and it is what makes the signature mean something:
“We created a short version of our terms and included them in the quote pricing module. Then, when a customer e-signs, they’re accepting the price, terms, and package we’ve put together for them."
Blake Ziolkowski, Sales Manager at LaunchNotes
Step 2: Connect Stripe
QwilrPay runs on Stripe, so you connect an account once and it applies across your pages. Setup needs an account admin in Qwilr and ownership of the Stripe account, and if you were already taking Stripe payments through Qwilr you move across automatically. The QwilrPay setup guide covers the connection itself.
Buyers can pay by card (Visa, Mastercard, American Express), by Apple Pay or Google Pay, or by bank debit. Bank debit depends on where your buyer is: ACH in the United States, BECS in Australia, SEPA in Europe.
What your plan does affect is the fee. Qwilr charges a platform fee of 0.09% per transaction on Starter and 0% on Growth and Scale, and Stripe's own processing fees apply separately on every plan. The pricing page carries the current numbers.
Stripe processes the payment rather than Qwilr. Stripe is certified to PCI Service Provider Level 1, the most stringent certification in the payments industry, and every transaction is encrypted in transit over TLS, the protocol still widely called SSL.
Step 3: Set your payment terms
Before sending your quote, make sure to set the payment terms you want. You can take the full amount upfront, take a deposit as a flat fee or a percentage of the total, or leave payment optional so the buyer chooses whether to pay now or later.
For ongoing work you can set up recurring billing, and then choose how each cycle is collected. That choice matters more than it looks:
| Charge the card on file | Send an invoice each cycle | |
|---|---|---|
What happens | The payment method is debited automatically each cycle | The customer is emailed a secure link each cycle to pay manually |
Suits | Buyers who want it handled and never think about it again | Buyers who need a purchase order, an approval step, or control over payment timing |
Trade-off | Fastest to cash, but a charge nobody expected is where disputes come from | Slower to cash, and every charge is explicitly authorized by your client |
Admin | None after setup | None after setup: invoices go out automatically and are managed in Stripe |
Either way you control the billing frequency, whether it runs indefinitely or to a fixed end date, whether it starts at acceptance or on a set date, and whether there is a free trial first. The recurring payments guide has the full setup.
Two constraints to know before you build. A Stripe subscription holds a single billing interval, so a quote mixing monthly and annual items creates separate subscriptions. And part payment and recurring billing cannot both be switched on, so a deposit alongside an ongoing subscription is not a combination QwilrPay supports.
Whatever you decide, the buyer sees it clearly in your quote before they sign.
Step 4: Add an e-signature
Add a signature field so acceptance and payment happen in one flow. Qwilr's e-signatures are legally binding, and once the buyer signs, payment can be completed right away.
Both actions are recorded automatically, so you are not chasing paperwork afterwards. The acceptance record holds who signed, their legal entity, the options they chose and the deal value, frozen as agreed rather than re-priced later, which is the version finance asks for months down the track.
Step 5: Send it and see what happens
Once you send the proposal or quote link, Qwilr shows you when it was opened, what sections were viewed, and confirms when it is signed and paid. So your next follow-up lands on what they read, not on a guess.
Try it on your next quote
If you want to send quotes that clients can sign and pay in one step, QwilrPay does it in one link. Explore QwilrPay or book a demo to see the sign-and-pay workflow in action.
A sign-and-pay quote is one online document where the buyer reviews your pricing, signs it and pays, with no separate invoice in between. In Qwilr it runs on QwilrPay, which connects your Stripe account to the quote so payment happens the moment the buyer accepts.
About the author
Isabella Cerini-Palozzo|Copywriter & Content Specialist
Bella is a SEO copywriter and content specialist with a background in law, before transitioning into marketing and content. She helps brands grow visibility and drive action through clear messaging and search-led content (blogs, website copy, and social), with a focus on GEO/SEO, strategy, and conversion. A lifelong storyteller with an early passion for screenwriting, she brings narrative craft to everything she creates - and when she’s not writing, you’ll find her teaching yoga or enjoy a dip in the ocean.
Frequently asked questions
Yes, with one step outside Qwilr. Part payment collects a deposit at acceptance, as either a flat fee or a percentage of the quote total. Once that clears, the customer record moves into your Stripe account, and you raise the balance there: find the customer, create an invoice, then either request payment or charge the card already on file. Note that part payment and recurring billing cannot both be switched on, so this is the route for one-off work rather than a subscription.
Qwilr charges a platform fee of 0.09% per transaction on the Starter plan and 0% on Growth and Scale. Stripe's own processing fees apply separately on all plans, so on Growth and Scale the only cost on top of the sale is Stripe's.
Charge the card when the buyer wants it handled and the amount is predictable. Send the invoice when they need a purchase order or an internal approval, or when they want control over timing. The second is slower to cash, but every charge is explicitly authorized, which is where payment disputes tend to come from.
Yes, in the United States. QwilrPay supports ACH debit through Stripe, along with BECS in Australia and SEPA in Europe. Buyers can also pay by card, Apple Pay or Google Pay. Availability follows your buyer's country and currency, not your Qwilr plan. Stripe sets no fixed ACH ceiling, though it can apply limits based on your payment history.
If you connect QuickBooks Online, a draft invoice appears there each time a client accepts a Qwilr page, carrying the line items, pricing and tax from your quote block. It fires on acceptance rather than on payment, and the page needs both a quote block and an accept block for it to work. Taxes have to be mapped between the two systems first, and the customer needs an existing contact record in QuickBooks.
