Use client quotes

Utilizing client quotes | Smartcat Help Center Quotes, cost calculations, and billing overall are rather complicated tasks that often require loads of effort and time from the team. The good news is that Smartcat now allows generating quotes in projects and issuing invoices incorporating these quotes, so let's take a look at how it works. What should we begin with? The first thing to do is to add information about clients to Smartcat and set net rate schemes for them. This will facilitate the quote creation process since a net rate scheme clipped for a particular client is applied automatically for calculating statistics(the Statistics tab in the project) in a project where this client is set. Even better would be to add a few services and rates. Every project created in your corporate account has the Quote tab where you can calculate the cost of work for the client applying one of the snapshots statistics calculated in the project. Even if you have calculated the cost outside Smartcat, you can attach the file with calculations while forming a quote. Still, the better option is to utilize statistics calculations generated in Smartcat. Well, let's say we have already done all preliminary preparation like filling out the client's card and setting a project. Now it's time to start calculating the quote. In the first step, the system takes the client from the project and the contact person from the client card, so all that remains is to choose the currency and set the approval deadline (if necessary). After hitting the Insert button in the second step of forming a quote, the calculations from the Statistics tab of a project will be pulled into the form. The system takes the last calculated snapshot by default, but you can select previously formed if any. It is not a big deal to forget calculating statistics before forming a quote since the system will calculate statistics at this moment. Let's take a closer look at the parameters that you can specify at the second stage: Service: if there are no suitable services yet,  you can add a new service in the field right from the form. Services and rates can be specified in the Clients section;Language: allows selecting one of the language pairs that a project has;Unit count with a breakdown: it's possible to hide the breakdown and only set the unit type and unit count without pulling Smartcat statistics from a project;Unit type: allows you to choose one of 6 preset units — characters, words, hours, minutes, documents and pages;Rate: price for 100% of the rate in detail rows for a unit. Added automatically if the service and rate are specified in the corporate account;Statistics at {date}: snapshots from the Statistics tab of a project. Check this article to learn more about how Smartcat calculates statistics;Breakdown: detalization rows with calculations. You can add your own row or remove one of preset;Cost of work. In the last step, you can specify the project deadline, whether the cost is agreed upon, and whether the project has already been paid. Important! If you mark a project as paid, the quote cannot be used for invoicing the client or edited later. When a quote is formed, you may download or send it for approval and, if necessary, make corrections to the calculation later or add a new service, for example, project management. That's it. Now you can use the quote for invoicing the client. It's worth noting that the quote included in an invoice cannot be edited; thus, you have to delete the invoice first before making any changes. Last but not least, it's possible to make your own custom template or even each per client, including other data. It would be especially valuable if you want to quote clients in their native language. With the Smartcat subscription, new templates can be added to the corporate account settings. To find out more about the data on which you can carry out operations in templates, check this article about Smartcat Template Engine.

Understand project statistics

Project statistics | Smartcat Help Center Word count statistics is an oft-confusing topic as different CAT tools often have different approaches to calculating it. Let’s see how Smartcat handles this. Personal workspace statistics for own projects Word count statistics allow you to view the number of words and characters in the original text and estimate the amount of work required, taking into account repetitions and matches with the translation memory. To calculate and view statistics, go to the project page and open the Statistics tab. The calculation may take some time, depending on the number of documents, their volume, and the sizes of translation memories connected to the project. You can reconfigure the set of documents or translation memories used to calculate the statistics for projects you have created. You can download the statistics in the following formats:Trados XML — compatible with SDL TradosSmartcat XLSX — for MS Excel or any other spreadsheet software Clicking the Refresh button allows you to recalculate the statistics taking into account the current progress. (Technically, this will be due to the updated translation memory entries.) In this case, all the segments that have already been translated will be counted as 102% matches in the new “snapshot” as at a certain time and for the specified documents. Such an approach allows you to remember how many words there were in the very beginning before you started to work on the project. If you forgot to calculate statistics at the start, you can uncheck the translation memory that new entries were written to and refresh the statistics. Smartcat supports the following statistics:WordsAsian charactersPages, where 1 page = 250 words/Asian charactersCharacters with spacesCharacters without spaces For logographic languages, Smartcat indicates three columns instead of one:Asian charactersWords in alphabetic languagesWords & Asian characters combined Personal workspace statistics for assigned projects If you have been invited to a project via the Smartcat Marketplace, you will not see the entire statistics as per the previous section. Instead, you will see the summary calculation for all your assigned tasks and workflow stages, e.g. Translation. Here are things worth noted. My tasks column shows a preliminary calculation of the price & volume of assigned work. You can see how many total words were assigned, the number of repetitions, and, most importantly, the number of effective words. “Smartcat has helped us to achieve the consistency and scalability we were looking for. It’s been a game-changer for our team at expondo, and I would recommend it to any company looking to expand their global reach.” Julia Emge Head of Translations, Expondo Explore case study Effective words represent the number of words to be paid factored according to the customer’s settings of discounts for translation memory matches and repetitions. Completed words are words you actually translated or edited. Smartcat calculates completed words in real time, so you can always see how much you have earned. The Net rate scheme column shows the customer’s settings for discounts for repetitions and TM matches. The settings are different for different workflow stages, e.g. Translation. The TM match rate represents how similar a segment’s text is to the one stored in the translation memory. The minimum match threshold is 50%. Matches below this threshold are considered new segments. The final cost calculation may differ from the preliminary one, as Smartcat does not currently identify partial matches between segments that have not yet been recorded in the translation memory at the time of the preliminary cost calculation. It is important to remember that in Smartcat, the cost calculation is always based on the number of words or Asian characters in the source text, not the translation. Corporate workspace statistics In basic principles of building statistics in the corporate workspace are no different from those in the personal space. For each project, you can view the number of words or characters in documents and estimate the amount of work, taking into account repetitions and matches with the translation memory. The statistics shows data the total number of words, segments, pages, and characters, the number of unique segments and matches with the connected TMs, the number of repetitions inside each file, and cross-file repetitions. The corporate workspace provides more functionality and allows you to download statistics for each of the assigned contributors. The statistics report contains the amount of work assigned to and completed by each contributor. Statistics are downloaded in the XLSX format. A separate file is generated for each contributor. Each file contains data for a single language pair and a single task. If there are several stages or language pairs, a separate report is generated for each pair, i.e. each combination of a stage and a target language.Statistics per assignee are generated after the assignment. Even though such statistics cannot be recalculated manually, it changes automatically depending on the assignee's progress. You can also calculate the statistics using a different TM net rate, e.g. if you need to provide different pricing to your customer. You can set the TM net rate here.

Analyze revenue and margin reports

Revenue and margin reports | Smartcat Help Center Note: This is a paid feature. To use it, upgrade to Rise or higher. Smartcat revenue & margin reports allow language service companies to analyze their revenues, costs of goods sold, and margin (ROI) over time and across different channels. This includes: Weekly payments, including received, expected, and overdue payments: Month-to-day receivables to compare your current performance with the previous two months: Net sales, including sales to existing and new clients: Cost of goods sold, i.e. the money paid to your suppliers: Margin, i.e. profitability, in absolute values and as a percentage of COGS: Revenue, costs, and margin for each client, to find out which ones give you the best ROI: