Live proposal preview

A live proposal preview renders the proposal document beside the estimate as it is being built, using the same renderer and the same data as the copy that will eventually be sent — so what the estimator is looking at is the document, not an approximation of it. It matters because the alternative is a generate-download-open-discard loop: every pricing change, formatting choice or template edit otherwise costs a round trip through a PDF viewer, which is slow enough that people stop checking and proposals go out with a mis-set column or an orphaned page. A preview that re-renders as the estimate changes moves that check to where the work is happening. A transient rendering failure should leave the last good document on screen rather than an empty pane, so a momentary error never looks like a broken proposal. DesignFlow Build shows the preview on an estimate's proposal tab and inside the PDF template editor, and it draws whichever renderer the company is set to, so it is accurate before any template configuration is done.

Related term: Proposal formatting (per-line)