The pricing calculator builds a quote line by line from your own costs, and shows what you are making as you build it.
Building one
Lines come from your catalog or are entered directly, searchable by part number or description, grouped into categories you control, and reorderable by dragging.
Each category can be given the heading it prints under on the customer document, so what you organise by internally and what the customer reads can differ.
The two ways to price a line
Gross profit markup — set the margin you want and the sell price follows.
Price override — type the sell price directly and the calculator shows you the gross profit it leaves.
You can switch a line between the two, and this is the feature worth understanding properly. Quoting by markup keeps your margin deliberate. Quoting by price is how you match a number a customer has in mind — and the calculator then tells you what that decision costs you, before you commit to it rather than after.
See markup and margin, because a 40% markup is about a 29% margin and the difference is the most expensive arithmetic mistake in the trades.
Discounts, incentives and staged payments
A discount reduces the line or the total. An incentive or rebate is money coming from somewhere other than you — a manufacturer or a utility — which lowers what the customer pays without lowering what you receive.
Keeping the two separate is what stops a rebate being absorbed as if it were your discount.
Payments can be staged, at rough-in and at final trim-out, which matters for anything long enough that funding the middle of it out of your own cash is a real cost.
Templates
A quote you build repeatedly can be saved as a template and started from next time. Most service businesses quote a handful of jobs over and over, and rebuilding them from nothing each time is where the hours go.
Producing and sending it
The quote produces a customer document with your business details and an expiry date on it. Where a field service system is connected, the quote can be pushed to it so the job and the quote are the same record rather than two.
Photos
A photo of the property can be attached. On larger work it does more than decorate: it is what lets you and the customer talk about the same thing six weeks later.