Quote configurator with margin calculation

The client

The same Hungarian contracting company whose work runs project by project. Quoting here does not come off a price list: every quote is a bespoke configuration, built from dozens of line items, under commercial terms that depend on project size. The system was not built as an external engagement — it was built from the inside, as the company's process manager. The company name is not published.

The task

A technical quote is not assembled from a catalogue but from a configuration. That produces several requirements a spreadsheet does not meet on its own:

Prices must come from a single source. If the price list lives in several workbooks, sooner or later two quotes give two prices for the same product — and the difference surfaces at the client.
Commercial terms depend on project size. Expected margin, financing and term are not the same on a small and a large project. Either a rule handles that, or someone works it out from memory.
The margin has to sit behind the quote. The client receives a price; the decision needs to know what that price earns. If that only emerges after invoicing, the pricing was done blind.
The client-facing document cannot be assembled by hand. That is the point where mistakes are least affordable: a mistyped price, an old version, the wrong client name.
One system has to produce several kinds of quote. Designer, commercial and residential variants — different logic, shared master data.

The solution

A configurator running on the company's existing Google account, with no separate software licence.

Central product and price master — every item in one place, with an item number. Pricing is changed in one place, and from then on every new quote works from it.
Commercial parameters in a table, not in someone's head — expected margin, VAT, financing, term and hourly rates are recorded in bands by project size. The configurator picks the right band from the size of the project.
Automatic margin breakdown — from revenue through material and direct costs to margin, itemised. The person quoting sees what the configuration earns before the quote goes out.
A control row in the margin calculation — if a new cost category is added to the list but not wired into the breakdown, the system flags it. Without that, such a category would drop out silently and the project would look more profitable than it is.
Quotes generated at the touch of a button — the client-facing document is produced from a template, filled with the configuration data, in Hungarian number and date formats. No copy-paste.
One source for the version number — the quote number, the document header and the register all use the same version. Two different numbers in two places cannot happen.
Registration and project folder — every quote gets an identifier and lands in the project's own consistently structured folder, under a searchable filename.
An accepted quote becomes a project — the configuration data flows on into project document generation: schedule, project folder, documents. Data is entered once and then travels through the process — it is not retyped.

Outcome

Pricing changes in one place. When prices move, nobody has to track down who is working from which workbook — the price list is updated and new quotes already use it.

Margin is not a surprise. The person quoting sees what the configuration earns before sending it, and can decide how much to concede.

Quotes are consistent. The same structure, format and numbering, regardless of who produced them.

An accepted quote is not a dead end. The quote becomes a project from the same data, so the order and the start of delivery do not begin with another round of data entry.

Where else this works

The solution is not built on the client's field but on a situation: the quote is assembled from a configuration, not from a catalogue. That recurs everywhere.

In manufacturing — made-to-measure products: windows and doors, furniture, metal structures, machinery.
In building services and contracting — where the price is made up of materials, labour and plant costs.
In industrial services — where a quote is built from line items, hourly rates and call-out charges.
In trade, where larger deals carry bespoke pricing and discount rules.

There is one precondition: an orderly product and price master. If prices live in people's heads and in email threads, that is where to start — a configurator automates the rule, but the rule has to be stated first.

Operation

The system runs on the company's own Google account, with no separate software licence. The price list, the commercial parameters and the document templates are maintained by the company itself — developer involvement is needed when the logic changes, not when the prices do.

This case study is based on a real system, anonymised. Time savings were not measured, so no figure is claimed for them.