Spreadsheet quoting fails quietly
Most quoting problems are not visible until an audit or a margin review. A price list gets copied and edited. A salesperson applies a discount nobody approved. Two quotes for the same SKU go out at different numbers in the same week, and neither records which list version it came from.
None of this triggers an error. The quote looks correct, the customer accepts it, and the margin loss surfaces months later — if at all.
The fix is structural: a quote must be reconstructible. Given a quote number, you should be able to say exactly which price list version, which discount rule, and which approver produced every line on it.
What we build into a quoting system
Versioned price history
Every price list is a version, never an overwrite. Quotes stamp the version they were built from, so an old quote can always be explained.
Discount authority
Discount bands tied to roles. Anything beyond a user's authority routes for approval instead of silently shipping.
Validators
Structural checks that run before a quote can issue — currency consistency, missing list version, line-level discount variance against the SKU's expected band.
Affected-quote tracing
When a price changes, the system tells you which open quotes are now wrong — the question that is nearly impossible to answer in spreadsheets.
Multi-currency integrity
Where a catalogue is maintained in more than one currency, disagreement between them is surfaced as an error, not averaged away.
Branded PDF output
The document the customer sees: correct layout, version identity, salesperson, and a footer that ties back to the record.
Where this fits
This work suits distributors, industrial suppliers, and contracting firms with a large SKU catalogue, tiered customer pricing, and a sales team that quotes daily. The signal that you need it is usually one of these:
- Nobody can answer "why was this quoted at this price?" without opening several files.
- Discounts vary across the team in ways that are hard to defend in a margin review.
- A price update means manually hunting through open quotes.
- The catalogue exists in multiple currencies and they have drifted apart.
If quoting is simple and the catalogue is small, you do not need a custom system and we will say so.
Common questions
What is a quotation management system?
A quotation management system generates customer quotes from a controlled product catalogue and pricing rules, rather than from spreadsheets. Its core job is price integrity: ensuring every quoted line traces to a specific price-list version and an authorised discount, so quotes can be reconstructed and audited later.
Why not just use spreadsheets or the quoting module in our ERP?
Spreadsheets have no version identity and no approval control, so pricing errors are invisible until a margin review. ERP quoting modules solve control but impose a fixed pricing model — they struggle where discount authority, customer tiers, or multi-currency catalogues do not match the vendor's assumptions. A custom build fits the pricing logic you actually run.
How do you handle discount approvals?
Discount authority is modelled as bands tied to roles. A quote that stays within a user's authority issues normally; anything beyond it is blocked and routed for approval. The approval is recorded against the quote, which is what makes the discount defensible afterwards.
What happens to existing quotes when we change a price?
Historic quotes keep the price-list version they were issued against, so they remain accurate records. Open quotes are flagged as affected by the change, with a list of exactly which ones and which lines — so the commercial team can decide to reissue or honour them deliberately.
How long does a custom quoting system take to build?
A first working version usually takes four to eight weeks depending on catalogue complexity and how clean the existing price data is. Data cleanup is normally the largest variable — catalogues that have been maintained by hand across several currencies take longer to reconcile than the software takes to build.
Describe the process that costs you the most
If a custom build is not the right answer, that is a short conversation and it costs you nothing.
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