Hello, Simon.
Thanks for the ideas, and I do like the idea of having a customer portal. Plus, letting your customers manage their quotes would be a time-saving feature.
Having the option to let your customer set the quote status would be a good addition for QuickBooks Online. A customer portal tool would also be a nice feature in managing your client-related transactions.
Our developers might work on these two ideas in the future, so stay tuned for email updates and in-product popups.
As what my colleagues mentioned, I would recommend sending feedback to our developers. Click the Gear icon, then select Feedback (or you can follow the steps provided by LieraMarie_A).
For now, you'll want to manually set your quote status in QuickBooks. Simply open the quote, click the status menu (below the Customer drop-down menu), then set a status.
Do you do progress invoicing for your customers? If you need help setting it up, I would recommend reading this article: Set up and send progress invoices in QuickBooks Online.
If you have more questions about handling your quotes or about other features in QuickBooks, please let me know the details below. I'll ensure you'll be able to complete your tasks and focus on your business.
