Quote Drafting
Every enquiry back as a draft, ready for your price.
An enquiry arrives as an email, often with a drawing or a spreadsheet attached, and someone reads it, works out what is actually being asked for, and starts from a blank template. All of that reading and retyping happens before a single decision worth making has been made.
Morning. Could you quote for 120 of the bracket on the attached drawing, 316 stainless, plus 40 of the smaller variant. Needed on site by the end of next month if possible.
- Bracket, 316 stainless, per drawing TE-4471120
- Bracket, small variant, 316 stainless40
- Delivery to site, date to confirm1
From enquiry to draft, in four steps.
New enquiries are picked up from the inbox or web form, with attachments kept alongside the message rather than lost in the thread.
Requirements, quantities, materials, tolerances, and dates are read out of the message and any attachment into a fixed structure.
Your own quote template is populated with what was stated. The price line is deliberately left empty.
Anything the enquiry did not say is listed as a question rather than assumed, so the gaps are visible before you price it.
What changes after we deploy this.
If any of these describe your business, this workflow earns its keep.
When enquiries come in as prose rather than through a form, every one has to be read and interpreted before it can be quoted. That reading is the same job every time.
If your quotes share a structure even when the work does not, the structure can be filled ahead of you. The judgement stays where it was.
A drawing or a spreadsheet carries requirements that never appear in the email body, and those are exactly the ones missed when someone is quoting quickly.
How much of your quoting time is reading, and how much is deciding?
Send us three recent enquiries. We will show you the draft each would have produced, and where it would have stopped and asked you something.
It runs inside the tools you already use.
And 30+ others. If your tool is not listed, ask.
See every integrationThe questions we get before we build.
Still unsure? Ask us directly and we will answer before you commit to anything.
Does it decide the price?
No, and this is the boundary the whole workflow is built around. It fills everything a template can be filled with and stops exactly where judgement begins. The price line arrives empty every time.
Could it price things eventually?
Where a genuine rate card exists and the price really is a lookup, yes. At that point it becomes the same choice the Inbox Responder already offers: a draft you approve, or straight through without you. That choice is yours rather than ours, and it is a decision about your pricing rather than about the software.
Why not just send the quote automatically?
You can, once pricing is a lookup rather than a judgement, and some businesses should. We are slower to recommend it here than with email for one reason that has nothing to do with confidence: a quote can be treated as an offer someone accepts, so a wrong price can commit you in a way a wrong email never does. Where the lookup is sound and checked, that risk shrinks and auto-send is a reasonable setting. Where pricing is genuinely bespoke, no amount of confidence in the system makes an automatic number a good idea.
Does it send anything to the customer?
Not by default. It produces a draft, and the quote leaves when you send it. An acknowledgement to the enquirer can be added if you want one. Sending the quote itself without you is possible only where pricing is a lookup rather than a judgement, and it stays off unless you ask for it.
What about drawings and spreadsheets?
Attachments are read where they are readable, and what they contribute is shown as coming from the attachment rather than the email. A drawing that cannot be read is flagged rather than skipped silently.
What happens with a vague enquiry?
It produces a shorter draft and a longer list of questions. That is the correct outcome: the value is in seeing what is missing before you spend time pricing, not in a draft that looks complete because gaps were filled with assumptions.
Does this replace our quoting process?
No. It removes the reading and the retyping that happen before your process starts. Everything that follows, including whether to quote at all, is unchanged.
Other automations that complement this one.
This sits directly in front of Purchase Order Processing: one drafts the quote that wins the work, the other reads the order that follows it. Supplier Delivery Watch then covers what you buy in to deliver it.
Want your enquiries drafted before you open them?
Send us a few recent enquiries. We will show you what the draft would have looked like, and what it would have asked you.
Every workflow is a managed monthly service. No credit card, and we respond within one business day.