Print quote automation: write the rules once, stop rebuilding the same quote

A decoration quote is not a creative act. It is the same four inputs every time: the garment, the method, the quantity break and your markup. If it still takes twenty minutes, the rules are living in someone's head.

Watch someone build a quote in a busy shop. They look up the blank in a supplier catalogue, check a price sheet taped to a monitor, count colours or stitches, apply a markup they remember, and type the result into an email. Then they do it again for the same customer three months later.

None of those steps needs judgement. They need the rules, and the rules already exist. They are just not written anywhere a system can read them.

The four inputs behind every quote

• The garment or product: the supplier cost for that style, colour and size
• The decoration method: screen print, embroidery, transfer or direct print, each with its own price logic
• The quantity break: the point where the unit price drops
• Your markup: the margin you apply, by product type or by customer

Everything else in a quote, setup charges, extra locations, rush fees, is a variation on those four. If you can explain your pricing to a new employee, you can write it down as rules.

Write it once

The work is a single afternoon, not a project. Take your last twenty quotes and note what was decided in each one. The same handful of rules will explain nearly all of them. The few that do not fit are your exceptions, and they stay with a person.

Where the quote should appear

A quote engine hidden in the back office only saves your own time. The larger gain comes when the price appears where the customer is looking: on the mock-up, as they place the logo and choose the quantity. They see the price change with the quantity break, and the question 'how much for 72 instead of 48' never reaches your inbox.

That is why we attach the price to the mock-up in the stores we build. The customer designs, sees the number, and orders. The quote, the proof and the order become one step.

What a person still decides

• Jobs outside the rules: unusual placements, specialty inks, very large runs
• Strategic pricing for an account you want to win or keep
• Any quote where the artwork needs work before it can be produced

Automation does not replace the estimator. It removes the ninety quotes that never needed one, so the ten that do get proper attention.