Custom Quoting Software: Close More Deals With Fewer Mistakes

If there is anything that can irreparably fracture your sales cycle and prevent it from reaching the conversion stage, it is an inaccurate quote. Even if it slips under the radar, your business’ bottomline will still bear the brunt of it.

The result? Frustrated clients, loss of revenue, and wasted bandwidth. Your business cannot and should not keep suffering because of inefficient manual quoting processes. Neither should it be overly reliant on SaaS quoting tools. That is a recipe for doomsday too. 

You need to break out of the mold of spreadsheets to combat the sting of stalled approvals and subtle inefficiencies. The best way to get rid of the glitches and errors is to turn to custom quoting software. Tailored and automated, its rule-based pricing can save your business from manual bottlenecks. 

Efficient from the get-go, you get one-shot approvals and complete integration with your data systems, thus ensuring an effortless quoting process. In this blog, we will break down how automated quotes shrink the scope of human errors while improving accuracy and speed. 

Common Causes Of Human Errors In Manual Quoting

Manual quoting can be a hotbed of errors. Employing rudimentary tools such as spreadsheets to get the job done, keeping track of individual elements in each quote can be a challenge to say the least. However, that is not the only reason why errors persist. Let’s explore. 

Copy-pasting from spreadsheets

With spreadsheets as the only tool at their disposal, your team is forced to copy prices from multiple sheets during the course of their day. Frequent copying and switching can lead to version mismatches, typos, and old cell referencing. The results of such errors can be catastrophic, often leading to either skyrocketing or severely undercut prices. 

Version conflicts and outdated pricing

Even if you resort to online spreadsheets, or share them via drive or email – multiple users are bound to be working on it at different times, leading to the creation of different “latest” versions. This breeds inaccuracies and chaos. 

Missed approval checkpoints

If you have a large team working for you, quotes with tiered discount rules can often slip through the cracks without the approval they need. As a result, your final quotes may end up with underpriced figures. You also risk losing deals because of misrepresented numbers. You need a quote approval system in place to prevent this. 

Manual entry of client-specific configurations

For complex business models with regional pricing, varying products, and custom add-ons, manual quoting can bring forth costly challenges – particularly in the form of oversight. It is critical to resort to effective methods that help you avoid pricing configuration errors or risk losing a huge chunk of your sales and profits. 

At face value, these pitfalls can seem dire. After all, manual copying, version mix-ups, misconfigurations, and skipped approvals are nothing to scoff at. Fortunately, all of them are entirely avoidable. All you need is a custom quotation system to bail you out. 

How Custom Quoting Software Eliminates Revisions & Mistakes

A sales quote is the most vital element when it comes to closing a deal. Consider it the final factor that determines whether your client will sign up with you or continue looking elsewhere. Sending out quotes riddled with errors can often result in the latter. 

But with custom quoting software, you can bid adieu to manual quoting mistakes once and for all. By bringing about automation and customization, this system can help you combat human errors head-on. Here’s how it helps: 

Centralized product and pricing data

Interconnecting with your CRM and inventory, custom systems present a centralized data source that pulls live pricing and stock details to generate accurate quotes. Since there are no spreadsheets involved, there is no chance of mix-ups or outdated information. Automated quotes allow you to promptly send out quotes so you can speed up the sales cycle and close that deal much faster. Furthermore, dynamic generation ensures each of your quotes is always up to date and in line with the pre-defined rules of your business. 

Configurable rules to prevent invalid quotes

You get full autonomy to set pricing logic and quoting rules with custom software. For example, you can define business-specific items such as bundle discounts, regional pricing, margin thresholds etc. Since they are pre-configured, your system will automatically block any quote that violates this logic. Such quotes will be flagged and prevented from being sent to your client. As a result, your business will witness a reduction in pricing errors and outliers. 

Ability to auto-fill and validate data

Manually filling in details into elaborate quotes is already a recipe for errors. Not with custom software though. It is built to automatically populate key fields with important data such as customer details, past configurations, current configurations, accurate pricing, etc. in a templatized quote. It also performs validity checks on its own, ensuring issues such as missing fields, invalid SKUs or conflicting configurations do not arise. 

Real-time calculations and tax logic

Handling dynamic calculations is no easy task when quotes are created manually. However, in a quotation making software, complex formulas, billing, and taxes can be applied instantly. Quoting process automation ensures the complete elimination of miscalculations that often arise in manual quoting. 

Approval workflows and audit trails

For companies with complex approval chains, custom quoting systems can be a major blessing. They can allow quotes to be routed through workflows that accurately mimic the processes of your organization. This ensures visibility throughout the approval chain, preventing oversight while building concrete audit history you can refer back to if needed. There is no scope of sales quote revisions or missing key approvals. 

Checklist: Do You Need Custom Quoting Software? 

Unsure if your business could benefit from custom quotation software? There is an easy way to find out. A quick scan of the checklist we have curated below for you will reveal the answer. 

• Your business needs frequent quote revisions or corrections, thus clogging your sales cycle. If you find your reps spending a considerable amount of time and energy revising quotes due to errors, missing information and misconfigurations, it is time to rethink your quoting strategy. 
• You find that quotes requiring pre-approval from managers are often sent prematurely. The resultant margin loss, unauthorized discounts, and customer confusion are obvious signs you need to switch. 
• Your quoting process often requires you to apply client-specific pricing logic, discounts, or regional rules. Adjusting these manually may seem easy but it is highly error-prone and time-consuming. 
• Your team is dependent on rudimentary tools such as Excel, Google Sheets, and Word Docs to generate quotes. Version control, audit trails, and complex rules are out of the question if they use these tools. 
• Your business offers complex or configurable products with multiple pricing tiers. A higher SKU count is impossible to manage manually. In such cases, manual quotes are bound to lead to costly mistakes.

Even if only a few of the above statements apply, your business requires a custom quoting software. It is not merely a nice-to-have anymore. Automation is the only way you can streamline your quoting process, enforce rules, sync live data, and track every approval. The benefits do not end there. It is your magic key to removing bottlenecks and protecting your profit margins. 

From Bottlenecks To Profits: How Vestra Inet’s Custom Quotation Software Changed The Game

Quoting errors and bottlenecks were slowing down one of our clients’ sales processes. They were not able to generate Bill of Materials quickly. Outdated pricing led to overquoting or underquoting, which was harmful for the business. Plus, quotes needing multiple approvals often bypassed protocols, which led to lost margin. Revisions and misconfigurations led to a lot of back and forth, delaying the submission of quotes by days. 

What our client needed was a custom quotation system that could eliminate errors, sync with their CRM and inventory systems, and offer preset logic. Our system did just that. Its built-in workflow, configurable bundle rules, and one-click PDF generation completely overhauled their quote generation process. Revision rates dropped by a significant margin, while approval bottlenecks vanished. 

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How Vestra Inet’s Custom Quoting System Can Solve The Accuracy Problem

After working with countless clients over the last 20 years, we know how arduous, complicated, and costly manual quoting can be. We also have first-hand experience in solving the problems of manual quoting with custom software that often surpasses the expectations of our clients with its useful features. After all, our custom quoting engines can be built precisely to suit your workflow and your project. 

Tailored to your workflow approval needs

From regional pricing to multi-step approval queues and bundle discounts, Vestra Inet can build custom software that will adapt to your quoting workflow automatically. It will reflect your business’ rules and generate branded PDFs, thus maintaining consistency across the board. 

Scalable logic for complex pricing rules

Our systems are intelligent enough to handle business pricing complexity in an error-free manner. Conditional pricing, product configuration, margin triggers – our software can account for different nuances and yet generate fast, consistent, and accurate quotes every time. 

Seamless integration with CRM and other modules

We do not create rigid, standalone quotation systems that work in isolation. Built for deeper integrations, our software offers seamless connectivity with the rest of your software suite including your CRM, accounting and inventory systems. This helps in the creation of a centralized data source that is free of spreadsheet-induced version conflicts. Access to live data leads to the generation of quotes with the latest numbers.

At Vestra Inet, we make it a point to design quoting systems that treat the minimization of costly errors as a mission-critical feature. Our software ensures manual revisions are not needed. What you get are automated pricing rules, streamlined approval flows, and a crisp, clean user interface. 

Final Thought: Accuracy Isn’t Optional For Sales Quotes

Manual quoting errors may seem like small, fixable problems, but the truth is they can compound over time and result in deeper issues such as lost deals, margin erosion, and customer frustration. Breaking out of this loop is possible with custom quoting software, courtesy of Vestra Inet. Our systems are designed to flip the script, automating tailored workflows and eliminating human errors and revisions. Contact us to get the best custom software solutions in Ontario. 

FAQs

1. What is custom quoting software? 

It is a digital platform tailored to your company’s unique quotation workflows, and is primarily responsible for automating the process of quote generation. It can build quotes based on real-time data, business rules, and integrations, guaranteeing both speed and accuracy. 

2. How does quoting software prevent human errors? 

By primarily centralizing pricing, integrating live systems, and applying rule-based logic automatically to ensure human intervention is not required for quote generation. Thus, the scope of mistakes and outdated assumptions is entirely eliminated. 

3. Can quote systems handle multi-tier pricing or approvals?

Yes. With custom quote systems, you can apply complex logic. It can accommodate multi-level approval, regional pricing and bulk discounts, ensuring each of them is fully configurable. 

4. Is custom software necessary for businesses that use Excel?

Yes. The problem with Excel is that it can lead to errors and lacks audit trails. On the flipside, a custom solution can automate the entire process, integrate with various systems, ensure rules enforcement, and offer analytics – features which spreadsheets cannot match up to. 

5. What type of businesses benefit most from custom quote tools?

All businesses that offer configurable products, tiered pricing, and have complex approval workflows stand to gain with custom quote systems. That said, sectors such as manufacturing, construction, IT, professional services, and wholesale may benefit the most.