Draft an invoice from every quote request
A quote request builds a draft PayPal invoice with the service and a starting figure, ready to adjust once scope is agreed.
New submission on your "Request a quote" form
Create a draft PayPal invoice with the line items, ready to review before sending
One-directional. A submission triggers the action — nothing is written back into your form.
A quote request is not yet an agreement, so an invoice that sent itself would be wrong. A draft is the safe half of the job: payer, service and a starting figure are already in place, sitting in PayPal's Drafts list until you have agreed the scope.
Freelancers and two-person studios use this where price firms up on a call rather than on the form. By the time the number is settled, the paperwork is mostly written, and sending it costs one click instead of fifteen minutes of retyping.
Setting it up
- 1
Publish the quote form and keep Estimated Budget as a select with clear bands — those bands become the starting figure on the draft, so vague ranges make more work later.
- 2
In PayPal, check the invoice template the drafts will inherit: its terms, due date and tax settings apply to anything the Zap creates.
- 3
In Zapier, set formformform as the trigger app, choose New Submission, connect your account and select the quote request form.
- 4
Add PayPal's Create Draft Invoice action — not Send Invoice — so nothing reaches the client until you have read it.
- 5
Map Email Address to payer email and Company or Organization to the billing business name, so the draft is addressed to the company rather than the individual.
- 6
Use Service Type as the line item name and put Project Description into the invoice note. That is the context you want when you reopen the draft two days later.
- 7
Convert Estimated Budget into a number with a Formatter Lookup Table — a band such as 5,000 to 10,000 has to become 5000 — and map the result to unit amount.
- 8
Submit a test request, open Drafts in PayPal, check the figure and the terms carried over, then switch the Zap on.
What maps where
Using the Quote Request Form as the starting point. These are its real fields — swap in your own and the mapping works the same way.
| Form field | PayPal |
|---|---|
| Email Address | Payer email on the draft invoice |
| Full Name | Payer name on the draft invoice |
| Company or Organization | Billing business name on the draft |
| Service Type | Invoice line item name |
| Estimated Budget | Unit amount, after a lookup turns the band into a number |
| Project Description | Note on the invoice |
Variations worth knowing
Project work is often half up front. Add a second line item to the action for the balance, with the deposit as the first, so the payment shape is visible before you send. If the Zapier action only exposes one item row, create the draft with the deposit line and add the balance line by hand in PayPal — the draft is already open in front of you at that point.
Add a Zapier filter on Estimated Budget so the smallest band never reaches PayPal and your Drafts list stays readable. Every request still lands in responses, so nothing is lost — the filter decides what gets paperwork, not what gets a reply.
If something isn't arriving
Estimated Budget arrives as the text of the option, something like "5,000 to 10,000", and PayPal wants a plain number. Add the Formatter Lookup Table step between the trigger and the action, and make sure each option is copied into the table exactly as it reads on the form.
Company or Organization is optional, so it arrives empty for sole traders and the billing name falls back to whatever else you mapped. Either make it required with conditional logic when the enquiry is a business, or set Full Name as the fallback in the Zapier mapping box.
Frequently asked questions
Can I send the invoice automatically instead of drafting it?
Yes, swap the action for Send Invoice. That only makes sense when the price is fixed per service type. For scoped work, drafting first stops an invoice going out at a figure the client has never agreed to.
Does the client see the draft before I send it?
No. A draft lives in your PayPal account and nowhere else. The connection also never writes back to the form, so the person who filled it in sees nothing until you press send in PayPal.
What if I quote in more than one currency?
Set the currency explicitly on the PayPal action rather than relying on an account default. If you quote in several, run one Zap per currency with a Zapier filter deciding which submissions belong to each, since the amount itself is only a number.
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Build the form first
The automation needs somewhere to fire from. Publish a form, connect it once, and every submission from then on runs this flow.
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