AUTOMATION

Creating quotes automatically: which system suits your business?

Which system fits depends on one question: how much does one quote differ from the next? Three types side by side, with where they get stuck.

First find out where your time goes.

“Creating quotes automatically” sounds like one problem, but it’s usually three. Each needs something different.

• Drawing them up takes long. You keep typing the same lines and looking up prices. The gain then lies in templates and a fixed price list.
• The calculations go wrong. Margins, tiered pricing, discounts and extra work. The gain then lies in a costing that takes over the arithmetic.
• Nothing happens after sending. No reminder, no overview of what’s outstanding, and an accepted quote that then gets typed in all over again. The gain then lies in the follow-up and in the step to the invoice.

The third problem is the one most often skipped, because it isn’t in the quote itself. Yet it’s the part where work gets left lying.

Type 1: your accounting package.

Most accounting packages have a quoting feature with templates. There, an accepted quote becomes an invoice without retyping. Check first whether your package can already do this: you’re usually paying for it already.

This fits if your quotes consist of recognisable parts and the arithmetic is mostly adding up and VAT. It gets stuck if you really have to cost each quote, or if you want to offer several options side by side.

Type 2: a separate quoting or costing tool.

Tools like these have configurators, tiered pricing, margins per product group and options in one document. They’re often made for one sector, such as construction, installation or printing.

This fits if the price comes from a calculation rather than a list. It gets stuck if the tool is separate from your bookkeeping: then you gain time drawing up the quote and lose it again when invoicing. So always ask how an accepted quote ends up in your accounts.

Type 3: the quote comes from what you already know.

The least known route: the quote comes from data that already exists. The enquiry form on your site, the customer’s details, your product catalogue. Someone in your team checks the draft, adjusts it where needed and sends it.

This fits if enquiries come in along a fixed route and many quotes are alike. It gets stuck if every enquiry needs a conversation first. Then you’re automating something that only exists after that conversation.

What to look out for, whichever system it is.

• Approval that’s on record. As long as an approval only sits somewhere in an email, nobody knows for sure which quotes are settled.
• An overview of what’s outstanding. A quote that stays quiet for a week deserves a short message. You can only do that if you can see which quotes are still open.
• The route to the invoice. Does an accepted quote become an invoice without retyping? If not, you’re moving the work rather than removing it.
• Your own layout. A quote is a sales document. A system that forces you into its own template weighs more heavily than it seems.

When it doesn’t pay off.

If you make a handful of quotes a month and each one is different, automating brings little. And if your agreements now mostly live in conversations and loose emails, there’s nothing to build on yet. First the process on paper, then a system.

What TrompTech does here.

In TrompTech Layer you create a quote on the customer’s record, with lines from your own products, and you can see which quotes are outstanding. Once a quote is accepted, it becomes a draft invoice in one click. A quote only goes to the customer when someone in your team presses send. Quotes and invoices are in the Sales and Finance modules, from the Core step: €895 a month.

If the price has to come from your own costing, or the quote has to end up in another system, that’s custom work. Quotes from your own catalogue start at €6,500, then €249 a month for management. All amounts exclude VAT.

TrompTech Layer starts at €399 per month, excluding VAT and with no setup costs.