01 · Enquiry
Capture the specification
Quantities, material grade, thickness, finish, drawings and delivery terms are recorded against one enquiry number. Open questions for the customer are listed before any pricing starts.
Manufacturers · Fabricators · Made-to-order businesses
Quoting and estimating software built around your costing rules
Most made-to-order manufacturers quote from an Excel workbook that one estimator understands. We replace the copying, not the estimator: a quoting system that applies your own rates, keeps every revision the customer saw and turns the accepted quote into the job.
Fixed scopeQuoted before work starts
Human controlDecisions stay with your team
Honest boundaryKeep existing systems where they work
Why spreadsheet quoting breaks down
A customer asks for 10, 25 and 50 off in two finishes. The estimator opens last month's workbook, saves a copy, updates a steel price from a supplier email and retypes the totals into a Word template. Two weeks later the customer accepts 25 in a third finish. The quote is edited in place, the original is lost, and the works order is typed from whichever version someone opened last.
None of that is an estimating problem. The estimator's judgement was sound. What failed was the paperwork around it: rates that live in personal copies, quantity breaks recalculated by hand, and no record of which price the customer actually accepted.
One quote record, from enquiry to accepted job
Every quote lives in one place with its inputs, its calculation and its history. These are the parts we build, in the order a quote moves through them.
02 · Rates
Price from a controlled rate table
Material, labour, machine-hour and bought-out rates sit in one table with a source and a review date. A rate older than your agreed limit is flagged for a fresh supplier price instead of being used silently.
03 · Calculation
Show the working, not just the total
Setup, run time, material with scrap allowance, outside processes and margin are listed line by line, with each quantity break calculated from the same rules. The estimator can override any line and the override is recorded.
04 · Revision
Keep every version the customer saw
Issuing a quote freezes it as revision A. A changed quantity or finish creates revision B alongside it, so you can always see what was offered, when and at what price.
05 · Acceptance
Turn the accepted revision into the job
The accepted revision creates the job sheet or works order, or a supported import into your ERP, with the customer's order number and conditions attached. Nobody retypes the specification.
06 · Review
Compare estimate with actual
Where your team records real hours and material, the system shows the estimate against what the job actually cost. Rate changes are proposed from that evidence and approved before they reach the next quote.
Worked example: a bracket quoted at three quantities
A worked example of how the record behaves. Your fields, rates and layout come from your own quotes, not from this template.
- Enquiry
- A customer sends a drawing for a folded bracket in 3 mm mild steel, powder coated, and asks for prices at 10, 25 and 50 off.
- Calculation
- Laser and press-brake time come from your machine rates; setup is shown once and spread across each quantity break; powder coating is a bought-out line with the supplier's quoted price and its date.
- Estimator review
- The estimator checks the fold sequence, adds a note about the tolerance on one hole and adjusts the margin on the 10-off price. Both changes are logged against revision A.
- Change
- The customer accepts 25 off, but in zinc plate rather than powder coat. The system creates revision B with the new finishing line and does not treat the earlier acceptance as approval of the changed work.
- Handover
- Revision B is accepted in writing and becomes the works order, with the drawing reference, finish and the customer's order number carried across.
Excel, ERP and accounts: what stays and what goes
What usually stays
Your ERP or MRP keeps doing production planning and stock. Sage, Xero or another accounts package keeps doing invoicing and only receives the accepted customer and order details. If your costing spreadsheet holds rules that work, we read them out of it and rebuild them with the same answers before anything changes.
What usually goes
Personal copies of the costing workbook, rates pasted from emails, quote documents edited in Word and works orders typed from a PDF. Whether a connection to your existing software is possible depends on its version, licence and supported import or interface; we check that during scoping, not after.
Scope and price
A first quoting build covers one product family, one rate table and one quote layout. Before building, we agree a set of past quotes with your estimator and prove the new system produces the same figures, including the awkward ones. Multi-level assemblies, historical quote import and more than one ERP connection are scoped as later stages.
Fixed-scope builds start from £1,495, with the deliverables and price agreed in writing before work starts. If you are not yet sure where the time goes, the Operations Audit is £895 and measures it first. Hosting, support and licences are listed separately in the quote; see pricing and what is included.
Bespoke quoting software or an off-the-shelf estimating package?
Bespoke tends to win when
Your pricing depends on rules a standard package does not model well: unusual processes, customer-specific rate cards, or quantity breaks that follow your own logic. It also suits businesses whose rules already work in a spreadsheet and only need a safer home.
A package tends to win when
Your work is close to what an established estimating product already handles, such as standard sheet-metal parts. Configure that first. And if your team disagrees about how a job should be costed, agree the rules before paying anyone to build them. Our bespoke vs off-the-shelf guide goes through the trade-off.
Questions estimators ask
Will it calculate a price from a drawing?
Not on its own. It applies the calculations you have agreed to inputs someone has checked, such as blank size, cut length, fold count or weight. Reading the geometry, choosing the process, judging tolerances and weighing commercial risk stay with the estimator.
Can it keep our existing costing spreadsheet logic?
Yes, where the logic is sound. We document each formula, rebuild it, and check the new system against a set of your past quotes until the figures match. Where two copies of the spreadsheet disagree, we ask you which one is right.
How are supplier price changes handled?
Each bought-in rate has a source and a date. When a rate passes the age limit you set, quotes that use it are flagged for a fresh price. A new rate is approved by a named person before it is used in quoting.
Can customers see or accept quotes online?
It can be added as a later stage. Most first builds keep the quote as a PDF by email and record acceptance against the right revision, because that is how customers already work.
A quoting system that lasted eighteen years, then rebuilt
BEL Signs, a Sussex sign maker, quoted every job on a system built for them in 2008, every working day for 18 years, with no licence fee to keep it running. In 2026 we rebuilt it as WORMS 2, with branded quote letters and revisions, and brought all 22,639 quotes across. It is the standard we build quoting systems to now: plain records, rules the business can explain and code another engineer can maintain. Read the BEL Signs case study.
Before and after the quote
Built and supported locally
Based in Horsham, we work on site across Sussex and Surrey. Explore the practical starting points for businesses in Burgess Hill, Worthing, Guildford.
Bring one quote, its spreadsheet and the revision that caused trouble.
Fifteen minutes, free. We will look at how that quote was built, show you where the copying happens and tell you whether a quoting system would pay for itself or whether your spreadsheet only needs tidying.
If the honest answer is that the process needs the system rebuilt rather than one step automated, that is a bespoke business system built around your work.