--- title: "Accept part of a quote" description: "Let buyers accept, decline, or defer each line of a proposal - and understand what the timeline, their view, and the PDFs show afterwards." url: "https://www.quotway.com/docs/negotiation/partial-acceptance" type: "documentation" category: "negotiation" updated: "2026-09-16" locale: "en" source: "QuotWay - B2B Quote & Negotiation App for Shopify" --- # Accept part of a quote **Read time:** 6 minutes. **Last updated:** September 16, 2026 **Who it's for:** Merchants sending multi-item proposals, and anyone who needs to read what a buyer actually agreed to. **Plan:** Partial acceptance is available on the **Professional plan and above**. On a multi-item quote, "do you accept?" is usually the wrong question. A buyer wants two of the four lines now, doesn't want a third at any price, and needs another week on the fourth. QuotWay lets them answer that way: each line carries its own decision, submitted in one go. ## The three decisions When a buyer opens a sent proposal - in their Shopify customer account or in the hosted portal - every line offers three choices: | Decision | What it means | What happens next | |---|---|---| | **Accept** | The buyer commits to this line at the quoted price. | Carries into the Shopify draft order when the quote converts. | | **Decide later** | No commitment yet; the line stays on the table. | Shown to you as **"Still open"**. Remains negotiable - you can counter it or send another round. | | **Decline** | The buyer does not want this line. | Stays visible on the quote, struck through, and is excluded from the order. | A buyer can use all three on the same quote in a single submission. ## Why "Still open" is not "Declined" This distinction is deliberate, and it is the main reason to prefer per-line decisions over a single accept/decline on the whole quote. A deferred line is a line you can still win. If QuotWay reported it as declined, you would stop working it - you'd read a door as closed when the buyer deliberately left it ajar. So a deferred line is labelled **Still open** everywhere: in the timeline, on the quote, and in the buyer's own view. Only an explicit decline is reported as declined. ## What you see afterwards Open the quote in your QuotWay admin: 1. **The timeline** records the acceptance as **"N accepted · N declined · N still open"**, and lists what happened to each line. 2. **The line items** keep every line. Declined lines are struck through and dimmed, with a short explainer beneath the list. Nothing is deleted. 3. **The status** becomes *Partially accepted* when some - but not all - lines were accepted. > **Why declined lines stay on the quote:** a quote that quietly drops what the buyer turned down is a quote you can't reconstruct later. Six months on, "why didn't they take the extended warranty?" is a question your own record should be able to answer. ## What the buyer sees In the customer account and the portal, the buyer's quote shows an outcome badge on each line - **Accepted**, **Declined**, or **Still open** - and states the **accepted figure alongside the quote total**. Both numbers are shown on purpose. The quote total still describes the whole quote, because the lines that are still open may yet be agreed; the accepted figure is what the buyer has actually committed to. Showing only one of them would either overstate the commitment or hide the remaining opportunity. ## What the documents show The paperwork follows the same rule - a document must not say more than what was agreed. - **Confirmation PDF** and **Pro-Forma PDF** list **only the accepted lines**, headed by an **"Accepted items (N)"** count and an **Accepted total** that equals the lines printed beneath it. There are no discount, shipping, tax, or grand-total rows implying the whole quote was bought; shipping and tax are confirmed at order creation, and the document says so. The acceptance stamp reads "confirms acceptance of **N items from** quote QW-…, items not listed were not accepted." - **Proposal PDF** still lists **every** line, including ones later declined. Its job is to document what was *offered*, so scoping it to the accepted subset would misrepresent the offer. For how the documents are branded and which one is issued when, see [PDF branding and documents](/docs/documents/pdf-branding-and-documents). ## Continuing the negotiation A partially accepted quote is not finished. You can: - **Send another proposal** covering the lines that are still open. The accepted lines are already settled and aren't re-opened. - **Convert what was accepted** into a Shopify draft order now, and keep negotiating the rest. See [Convert a quote to a draft order](/docs/converting-to-orders/convert-a-quote-to-a-draft-order). - **Let the buyer accept more later** - from their account or the portal, they can accept remaining open lines without starting over. Splitting the accepted lines across several draft orders - different ship-to addresses, staged deliveries - is covered in [Partial acceptance and split conversion](/docs/converting-to-orders/partial-acceptance-and-split-conversion). ## Troubleshooting **The buyer only sees one Accept button for the whole quote.** Per-line decisions require the **Professional plan or above**. On lower plans the buyer accepts or declines the proposal as a whole. Check **Settings → Billing**. **A line shows "Still open" but the buyer told me they don't want it.** They chose *Decide later* rather than *Decline*. QuotWay reports what they selected; ask them to decline it explicitly, or remove the line yourself - see [Add or remove items on a quote](/docs/negotiation/editing-quote-lines). **The Confirmation PDF total doesn't match the quote total.** That's expected on a partial acceptance: the Confirmation shows the **Accepted total**, not the quote total. The two agree only when every line was accepted. ## Related - [Build and send a proposal](/docs/negotiation/proposals-and-versions) - [Add or remove items on a quote](/docs/negotiation/editing-quote-lines) - [What buyers see](/docs/buyer-experience/what-buyers-see) - [Convert a quote to a draft order](/docs/converting-to-orders/convert-a-quote-to-a-draft-order)