In a company that sells to other companies, the quote is often put together by the busiest person there: they open the last similar quote, change the header, look up prices in another file, ask over chat for sign-off on a discount and send a PDF. Then they forget to follow up. What goes by the short name of “quote automation” does not replace commercial judgement, but it clears the copying, the searching and the remembering out of the way.
In manufacturing there is the calculation as well: dimensions, materials, labour, transport, lead time. The more variables a quote has, the more you gain from rules written once and applied in the same way by everyone.
Why requests get lost between email, phone and Excel
Quote requests come in through several doors: the form on the website, the general email address, the sales rep’s phone, a WhatsApp message. If they do not all end up in the same place, you do not know how many you received, who got a reply and how long it took.
The second loss is one of consistency. Two sales reps give the same type of buyer different prices because they are working from lists saved on different dates, and the payment terms are copied from an old quote even though they have changed since.
Request, quote, approval, sending: what happens automatically
The starting point is the CRM, the software in which you keep track of contacts and sales conversations. If you already have one, we keep it and build around it.
Imagine you make bespoke furniture for commercial premises. An architect fills in the form on your website and attaches a floor plan. From there:
- Intake: the request appears in the CRM with the company, the contact person, the files and the source; the right sales rep gets a task with a deadline.
- Generation: the rep chooses the template and the catalogue items, and the prices and commercial terms fill themselves in.
- Approval: if the discount or the total value exceeds the threshold set by management, the quote goes first to the person with the authority to decide.
- Sending and tracking: the recipient gets a link to the quote; you see when it was opened and what response it received, and if there is none, a reminder goes out.
- Closing: the accepted quote becomes an order or a contract with no retyping, with an electronic signature if you choose to use one.
Quote templates and prices taken from the catalogue
The template fixes what does not change: the header, the structure, the general terms, the validity period. The variables are filled in from data: who is asking, what for, in what quantity. You usually need a few templates, one for each type of job.
The catalogue is the hard part. If prices live in your business management software, we read them from there through an API (an interface through which two programs exchange data), so that there is only one list. For configurable products we write the calculation rules: a price per square metre, a surcharge for a particular material. For quotes in a foreign currency, you agree with your accountant which exchange rate is used.
Every change creates a new version, and the old one stays in the history: you always know what the buyer received.
What you can and cannot find out about a quote you have sent
Tracking whether an email has been opened relies on an invisible image, which many email programs block or load automatically, so the result is unreliable. That is why we prefer the quote as a web page with a unique address: visits are recorded far more reliably there, and we can add the buttons for accepting and for asking questions.
Even then you do not find out everything. You see that the page was opened, not who read it, and sometimes the link is opened by a security filter rather than a person. The information is useful as a signal for the sales rep (now is the time to call), not as proof.
Electronic signatures come in several levels, each with a different legal value. Ask your company’s lawyer which type you need for your documents before we choose the provider.
The stages of a quote automation project
We start from real, recent quotes: we read them together and note what repeats, what gets calculated and where approval is sought. Without this reading, we would be automating a procedure that exists only on paper.
On the technical side, we connect the CRM to the catalogue and to a document generator (HTML converted to PDF, so that the quote looks the same on screen and in print). When the CRM does not allow the workflow you want, we write a separate module in PHP with Laravel, connected to it through the API.
- The request audit: where requests come in, who picks them up, how long a reply takes today.
- The commercial rules: price lists, discounts allowed per role, approval thresholds, validity.
- The trial with the sales team: a few real quotes prepared in parallel, the old way and the new.
- After go-live: response time, quotes with no response, reasons for rejection.
Frequently asked questions
Do I have to change the CRM I already use?
As a rule, no. If the software has an API and allows custom fields and stages, we build on top of it. A change is worth discussing only when the team does not use it anyway.
Can the system send the quote by itself, with no human involved?
For standard products with a fixed price and known stock, yes. For bespoke work we recommend that a person checks the quote before it is sent, because a calculation error can turn into a commitment you are bound by.
How long is it before the team is actually working in the new workflow?
It depends on how many types of quote you have, how tidy the catalogue is and how many programs need connecting. What most often causes the delay is not the programming but agreeing the pricing and approval rules inside the company.
This is a typical project description: it shows how we usually approach this kind of work and does not present a project carried out for a particular client. Every real project starts from your company’s situation, and the stages, timescales and price are agreed after the initial discussion.