The hidden cost of inconsistent quoting
When costing lives in a spreadsheet that gets copied and modified for every new quote, small inconsistencies compound quietly — a tooling amortisation formula that’s slightly different in one copy, a material cost that wasn’t updated after a price change, a surface treatment cost left out entirely. None of these show up as an obvious error; they show up as margin that quietly erodes over dozens of quotes, or a customer getting an unexplainably different price than a similar job quoted six months earlier.
What consistent quotation software actually does
- Structured cost categories — raw material, tooling amortisation, machining and process costs, and secondary operations (surface treatment, finishing) modeled separately and consistently, not blended into one number.
- Roll-up from engineering data — costs calculated from the same ballooned dimensions and process route used in engineering review, instead of being estimated separately and potentially inconsistently.
- Editable, transparent line items — every cost line visible and adjustable before a quote is finalized, not a black-box total.
- Version and approval history — a record of what was quoted, by whom, and who approved it, replacing the ambiguity of “which version of the spreadsheet is current.”
- Direct export to a customer-ready document — a branded quotation generated from the same data, instead of a final manual re-entry step.
How this looks in a working system
In InFaktory, costing is one stage in a seven-step AutoQuote wizard: once a part’s casting and machining drawings are ballooned and the process route is confirmed, material, tooling, machining, rejection-rate and forex costs roll up automatically from that data — editable line by line — before the costed RFQ becomes a customer-facing quotation, scored for commercial readiness and signed off role by role before it goes out.
Where to start
Quotation software is often the highest-leverage piece of manufacturing software to build first, because costing errors have a direct, visible impact on margin. Manufacturing Software Development covers the broader category this sits within, and RFQ Automation covers what happens upstream, before costing begins.