Enter the numbers by hand

Updated August 14, 2026

Not every quote arrives as a PDF you can drop. Sometimes it is a phone call, an email, or a number read off a carrier portal screen. Click Enter the numbers by hand on the New proposal page and you get the same shape of proposal the parser produces from a real quote, typed in instead of read off one. The renderer, the canvas and outline editors, the presenter, every export, and the coverage gap scan all work on it exactly the same as they would on a parsed deck.

Only the insured name is required. Everything else is optional, and anything you skip is simply left off the deck rather than shown as a blank or a zero.

#Money shorthand

Every dollar field understands shorthand. Type 1.5m and tab or click away, and it becomes $1,500,000. Type 250k and it becomes $250,000. A bare number like 2107797 expands to $2,107,797 the same way. The expansion happens on blur, so you can keep typing without the field fighting you mid-keystroke.

Premium lines print with cents, for example $9,832.00, matching what a parsed quote's premium lines show. Limits do not carry cents unless you type a fraction yourself, since a building limit or a GL occurrence limit reading $1,000,000.00 looks odd next to how carriers actually print them.

#What is on the form

  • Policy information. Insured name, policy period, mailing address, program type, transaction, quote expiration, and the carrier. The carrier field is internal only, exactly like a parsed quote's carrier: the deck presents it as an A-rated specialty company, never by name, to the client.
  • General liability limits. Each occurrence, general aggregate, products and completed operations aggregate, personal and advertising injury, damage to rented premises, medical expense, and the BI/PD deductible.
  • Property. Building limit, valuation method, causes of loss form, AOP deductible, wind/hail deductible, coinsurance, business income, a flood limit, and a checkbox for equipment breakdown coverage.
  • Premium. Add as many lines as you need, each with a label and an amount, and mark any line as a Fee rather than a premium so it is tagged correctly on the deck.
  • Excess / umbrella, optional, one row per limit and premium.
  • Binding requirements, a plain text box, one requirement per line.
  • Current policy, optional, tucked under its own expandable section, for the handful of fields needed to build a side-by-side comparison: carrier, annual premium, building limit, valuation, and wind/hail deductible.

#The running total already includes your agency fee

The total shown on the form is not just the sum of your typed premium lines. It reads your typed Program type text, whether you filled in a building limit or a GL occurrence limit, and your premium line labels, and uses the same surplus-versus-admitted-versus-monoline-auto logic a parsed quote uses to find the matching row in your Vault's fee schedule. Whatever that row says gets added: a dollar amount, or nothing at all if that program type carries no agency fee in your Vault. A note under the total spells out which fee is included, or that your workspace charges no agency fee for that program type. If nothing on your schedule matches, it falls back to a flat $500 rather than silently charging nothing.

#The flood field watches your own standard

If your Vault's coverage standards include a line naming a building-value threshold for flood, for example "quote flood whenever the building value passes $1,000,000," the Flood limit field picks that up. Type a building value that crosses your own threshold and a hint appears right next to the field's label, naming your own standard back to you, so the prompt to quote flood comes from your agency's own rule rather than a generic reminder.

#Binding requirements start prefilled

Opening the form for the first time fills the Binding requirements box with your Vault's coverage standards, one per line, ready to edit, trim, or replace. Nothing stops you from clearing it and writing your own list instead.

#The gap scan is honest about what it is

A manually entered proposal still gets a full coverage gap scan, but every finding cites "Entered by hand" instead of a page number, since there is no document to point back to. The scan also always adds one more finding: a plain warning that these limits and premiums were typed in, not read off a carrier document, and should be verified against the quote, email, or portal before you present the deck. That matters for more than tidiness, it is the difference in an E&O file between a number you can trace and a number nobody can back up. If you left the flood field blank and the building value crosses your own agency's threshold, the gap is flagged with the source "Agency standards" specifically, naming the dollar threshold you set.

#Drafts autosave, one slot

Everything you type autosaves to a single draft slot as you go, a moment after you stop typing. Close the form and reopen Enter the numbers by hand later, in the same session or a later one, and your draft is restored exactly as you left it. There is only ever one slot: since only one manual-entry form can be open at a time, that is the honest model, and it means the insured name rides inside the saved draft rather than the draft being keyed by a name that might change as you type it.

The draft clears automatically once you successfully build a proposal from it, and it also clears if you click Reset at the top of the New proposal page.

#Building it

Click Build the proposal inside the form. At least an insured name and one premium line are required; anything less and the form tells you what is missing rather than building an empty deck. Unlike dropping a real quote PDF, this path has no pre-build options step, since there is no parsed quote yet for a coverage gap scan to run against before the deck exists. See The three ways a proposal gets built for how this compares to the other paths through the New proposal page.