How do I price a one-off manufacturing order before I send the quotation?

2026-11-06 | Intagya ERP

A contractor calls about a villa entrance gate: two leaves, wrought iron, an electric lock with an opening motor. The salesperson writes it down and asks the engineer what it will cost. Give me two days, says the engineer. The contractor calls back that evening asking for the price.

So the salesperson makes up a number. The customer says yes straight away, and that is the first warning sign.

Why does a factory lose more on custom orders than on standard products?

Because the price of a custom order is written before its cost is worked out. A standard product has a tested bill of materials and a known price. A new order has no template, and every figure is a guess: how many steel sheets, how many welding hours, is the glass in stock or do we have to buy it?

When the customer pushes, the salesperson fills the gap with experience, and sometimes with hope. The loss does not show on the day of the quote. It shows a month later, when the supplier's bill arrives and the manufacturing order is closed.

My view is simple: whoever sets the price should see the cost, and whoever works out the cost should not be thinking about the price. Make them two people and two steps.

Who should price a custom order: sales or the design team?

The design team works out the cost; sales sets the price. In Intagya ERP you turn on Pricing by the design team in the manufacturing settings, and designers get their own app, Design and engineering.

On the quotation the salesperson presses Custom order request and fills one window: the product name as the customer will see it, the quantity, the delivery date, the spec in the customer's own words, plus photos or a drawing. The line is added to the quotation by itself, and if no designer is picked, the request goes to the least busy one.

One rule matters here: the quotation cannot go to the customer until the price arrives. A yellow bar says it is waiting for the design team, and pressing Send shows a message explaining why. It can feel slow. It is still cheaper than a wrong number with a signature under it.

What goes into a cost sheet for a custom order?

Four kinds of lines: materials, work, other costs and waste. A material is picked from the system, or typed as text when it is new and you have never bought it. A work line gets a work centre, and its cost comes from that centre's hour cost.

Next to each material are two numbers that change decisions: how much is in stock right now, and the last purchase price. When that price is older than 30 days the system warns you, and you press Ask purchasing for a price before handing over.

When the designer needs a detail, such as the lock type, they press Ask sales. The request timer stops until the salesperson replies, so the designer is not charged for time that was out of their hands.

Make the hour cost real. On the work centre, add the crew who work there and press Compute from salaries: the system divides each person's wage by the monthly hours of their schedule.

How do I price something I have never made before?

Start from the closest thing you have made. The Similar past orders tab searches the words of the name and the spec among orders priced before, and shows a match percentage, the expected cost and, for those already made, the actual cost.

A 2.80 by 2 metre gate for another customer two months ago is not your gate, but it is a better start than a blank sheet. Press Copy the materials, then adjust quantities and sizes.

Look at the actual cost column more than the expected one. If actual is always lower, you price too cautiously and lose bids. If it is higher, you lose money on every piece.

How does the price reach the quotation without the designer seeing the margins?

When the designer presses Hand the pricing to sales, the quotation line gets a price equal to the expected cost plus a margin. The margin starts at the rate in your settings, for example 25%, and the salesperson changes it in the Custom orders tab; the price follows.

The designer never sees selling prices. The salesperson sees the total cost, not its lines. That is on purpose: the designer costs the job without sales pressure, and the salesperson negotiates knowing where the floor is.

On the quotation, the invoice and the delivery note the customer sees the name the salesperson typed, such as a two-leaf iron gate 3 × 2.20 m, never the internal product the system uses.

Once the customer approves, how do I buy only the missing materials?

The customer approves as usual, and the system does the rest: it creates a product and a bill of materials for this order, turns new materials into products, creates the manufacturing order, and then creates requests for quotation for the missing quantities only, after what is already in stock.

Each request for quotation has two columns beside the vendor price: Expected, from the cost sheet, and Vs expected %. The buyer sees at once when a vendor is dearer than the designer assumed.

A material with no vendor waits in Materials to buy until purchasing picks one. When someone confirms a purchase above the expected cost by more than your limit, say 10%, the salesperson and the designer get an alert. It may not change this customer's price, but it should change your next estimate.

How do I know whether my estimate was right, and where orders get stuck?

When the manufacturing order is done, the system compares expected and actual cost and works out an accuracy percentage per order, per designer and per product type. The Expected against actual report answers a question no notebook can: do we price gates well and sheds badly?

The Order pipeline page puts each order on one row with its seven stages: spec request, pricing, quotation, customer approval, buying materials, receiving them, and manufacturing. The number in each stage is the days spent there, and the slowest stage is highlighted at the top.

You may blame the workshop, then find on this page that an order sat with the customer for five days before approval. That is a follow-up problem, not a production one.

Is this right for my factory?

If most of your orders are new, with no fixed template, and each price needs real working out, yes. You need the Sales, Manufacturing, Purchase and Inventory apps. If your orders only change in size within a known design, spec templates are enough, and pricing by the design team adds a step you do not need.

Tomorrow, do two things: compute the hour cost of one work centre from its crew's salaries, then send your next custom order to the design team instead of writing the number yourself. Once it is made, compare the two figures. The steps, with pictures, are in the user guide.

Design and engineering, step by step