Quoting Software

Managing price quotes manually isn’t easy. The process requires sales personnel to calculate cost estimates using different factors, such as discounts, tiered pricing models, and taxes. They then use this information to create price quote documents. But due to the iterative nature of customer negotiations, sales teams may need to revise the price quotes multiple times.

All these challenges make the process of creating price quotes time consuming and prone to errors. This results in customer fatigue, which increases the risk of your business losing customers before the deal comes through.

To overcome these challenges, you need a quoting solution that imports customer data from the CRM system, applies pricing rules and taxes, and provides you the price quotes instantly. The software will help you automate price calculation and data entry, ensuring that your sales staff spends less time on mundane tasks and more on cracking deals.

Read this buyer’s guide to select the right quoting software for your business. It includes the necessary information on the deployment options and common features of this software. 

Here’s what we will cover:

• What is quoting software?

• Deployment options for quoting software

• What are some common features of quoting software?

What is quoting software?

Quoting software is a tool that helps businesses calculate price estimates for products and services. The software performs the following functions:

• Pull customer details from the CRM and sales automation systems to populate customer details in price quote documents.

• Implement condition-based rules to calculate estimates. For instance, you can set discounts based on purchase quantity.

• Calculate taxes on different types of products and services to provide post-tax price estimates.

• Customize price quote documents using business logos, fonts, and themes.

Deployment options for quoting software

The first step to selecting the right quoting software for your business is to understand the deployment methods. Quoting solutions can be deployed in the following ways:

Cloud-based deployment: These solutions are hosted on the vendor’s servers and don’t require purchasing network hardware and data storage. Cloud-based tools are accessible from a web browser or mobile app. While these require an internet connection, some cloud-based systems also let you work offline. The data is synced as soon as the internet connection becomes available.

Cloud-based systems follow a subscription pricing model, which charges users on a per user per month/year basis.

On-premise deployment: Unlike cloud-based systems, on-premise systems are hosted on a business’s own servers and require additional servers and network equipment. The software is installed on the business’s desktops, laptops, and servers and accessed via an application.

On-premise systems come with perpetual pricing and charge for each user license. You may also need to pay extra for software updates.

At GetApp.com, we recommend cloud-based systems for small and midsize businesses. These systems require less technical expertise to deploy and operate, which eliminates the need of hiring IT professionals.

Key questions to ask your vendor before you buy: Apart from the pricing mentioned on your website, what are the costs related to deployment, support, and training? Based on my business needs, what is the annual total cost of ownership (TCO) of your product?

What are some common features of quoting software?

To ensure the long-term success of implementing a quoting solution at your business, you need to ensure that your shortlisted vendor offers all the features you need. 

If you select a solution that doesn’t have the required features, you’ll need to manage some functions manually. This will result in low return on investment. For instance, without a CRM integration, you’ll need to manually move contacts from the CRM to the quoting software.

Here are a few common features of quoting software that you should know about:

Contact management: Stores contact information of businesses and customers such as names, addresses, and type of business. This information is used to populate fields in the quote documents, eliminating the need for manual data entry.

Managing business contacts in CutQuote (Source)

Quote/Proposal creation: Lets you create manual and automated price quotes and then export the documents into various formats such as PDF and Microsoft Word. Once created, the sales teams can forward these documents to customers.

Quote creator in Quoter (Source)

Discount management: Lets you implement discounting plans while creating price quotes. The logic can include volume discounting, limited period offers, and promotional offers.

Prepayment discount in PandaDoc (Source)

Key questions to ask your vendor before you buy: Does your product offer all the features mentioned above? Does your product integrate with the CRM and accounting software used in my business?

Back to quoting software directory

*Note: The applications selected in this article are examples to show a feature in context, and are not intended as endorsements or recommendations, obtained from sources believed to be reliable at the time of publication.