Writing the quote does not take long; the time goes into hunting for the price, copying and correcting an old quote, and rebuilding the layout every time. Once the price list sits in one place and the rules are written down, a quote comes out in minutes.
Writing a quote takes ten minutes. Even so, in many companies preparing a quote spreads over half a day. The time that disappears is not in the quote itself but in the work around it.
The steps that eat the time
- Hunting for the price. Who has the current price? Is it in a spreadsheet, in an email, or in the sales manager's head? Usually all three — and the three do not agree.
- Copying an old quote. A similar quote is found and written over. It looks quick, but the old customer's name, the old date or the old price stays in the file.
- Rebuilding the layout. Logo, table alignment, currency, page breaks. Every quote looks slightly different.
- Doing the sums by hand. Discount, VAT, shipping, total. Every figure typed by hand is a candidate for error.
- Waiting for approval. The quote is shown to someone before it goes out; if that person is busy, the quote waits.
- Following it up. The quote is sent and forgotten. A quote nobody follows up ends up where an unwritten quote does.
Why is a template not enough?
A template fixes the appearance, not the decision. Most of the time spent on a quote goes into three questions: which line items go in, what the price is, and how much discount applies. Until the answers are tied to a written rule, every quote is reasoned out from scratch. And when the person changes, the answer changes too — the same customer gets two different prices.
Four conditions for one-click quotes
- Product and price list in one place. One list, one current version. When a price changes, it changes in one place.
- Written rules. Discount rules by customer group, quantity and payment terms are defined. Exceptions are entered by hand; the rule runs by itself.
- A fixed document layout. Logo, heading, line-item table, total, validity period and terms always in the same place. The document comes out the same way every time.
- Numbering and archive. Every quote is numbered in sequence and stored. What the customer was given before is visible without a file search.
With these four in place, preparing a quote comes down to picking the line items and selecting the customer. The sums are done for you and the document comes out with the logo on it. The same structure works for proformas, service forms and monthly reports; the detail is on the Report and quote automation page.
Reports do the same job
Monthly reports fall into the same trap as quotes in most companies: figures are copied out of Excel, charts are drawn by hand, and the layout drifts a little every month. Yet a report is also a document with a known input and a known output. The file is uploaded, the columns are mapped once, and the report comes out in the same layout every month. That makes last month's report and this month's directly comparable.
When does it not pay for itself?
A company producing three quotes a month has no reason to rush into this. But if several quotes go out a day, or if a mistake in a quote has already cost money, the arithmetic changes quickly. We collected the decision tests in Which jobs are suited to automation, and which are not?
In short
Preparing a quote is not writing the quote; it is finding the price, recalling the rule and building the document. Once those three are in order, the time drops to minutes and every quote comes out to the same standard.
Frequently asked questions
We use a Word template and it still takes long. Why?
A template only solves the appearance. The time mostly goes into decisions: where the price comes from, how the discount applies, which line items to include. If those are not written down, every quote is thought through again.
Our prices vary by customer. Can that be automated?
Yes, as long as the rule can be written down. Rules such as “this customer group gets this discount, above this quantity the price is that” are defined in the tool. You still give the exception; the tool works out the rest.
What about quote numbers and archiving?
Numbers are issued in sequence with no gaps, and every quote is stored under its own number. The question “what did we give this customer last time?” is answered without hunting through folders.
Is there a job that keeps repeating at your company? Tell us about it and we will build the tool that does it.
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