Intervals does not natively do estimates that a client signs off on at this time. We are contemplating adding estimates but the feature is not on the development plan at this time. One of the challenges we have learned is that people do bids in very different ways. When we used to do primarily web development prior to making Intervals publicly available, most of our projects were custom web applications so our bids were rather involved and detailed. Generating estimates wouldn’t work great within Intervals for us. An example of our estimate is here if you have any interest.
For lead management, we used to use a Pelago Sales project within Intervals and keep all of our template documents stored within Intervals. Other Intervals customer do the same thing. It is like light CRM to keep track of bids, conversations, and the status of the estimate. A task can be used per estimate to keep track of versions of the estimate, conversations, etc. If you win the contract the task can be closed and a new project can be created to execute the work.
For estimating, some Intervals users utilize the estimated work at the project level to ball park hours and then copy the project when it becomes active or export the estimated time and financial values into an estimate that a client signs. Also, some Intervals users use invoices for estimates and have created an “estimate” project and they create invoices specifically for that project. If an estimate becomes a project, they just create the project, rename the invoice, and move it over to the newly created project.
For detailed and elaborate estimating, we have seen customers utilize several project templates for repeatable projects. They copy the project, update the task estimates then use the estimated vs. actual link within a project to view the estimates by task then export it and make it a formal estimate for a client. It is pretty elaborate but if you need detailed task estimates it is an option.