Estimators
Price the print once, carry those numbers into the job, and find out what the estimate missed while it can still change the next one.
Whether the quote reflects what the job will actually cost to run.
An estimator carries risk in both directions. Quote high and the job goes to the shop down the road; quote low and you win the privilege of running it at a loss for six months. The only thing that reduces that risk over time is feedback, and feedback is exactly what most shops never produce: the quote lives in a spreadsheet, the job lives somewhere else, and nobody ever puts the two side by side. WorkCell builds the estimate from the structure the job will actually run, a multi-level bill of material and a routing with operations, then carries it into the job when the order lands. Costs post against that job as the work happens, so estimate against actual is a record rather than a project.
You quoted something close to this part eighteen months ago. The file is in a folder named after the customer, or it was on the laptop of the estimator who left. So you build it again from scratch, and the two estimates for the same part disagree by twenty percent. The customer notices that before you do, usually by quoting your own old price back at you.
The job runs, it ships, the invoice goes out, and nothing comes back to you. There is no mechanism that puts the hours you priced next to the hours that were burned, so twenty years of estimating produces experience but not evidence, and the same part is mispriced the same way every time.
The bar price you used was accurate last quarter, and the plating vendor has raised twice since. Nobody updated the sheet, because the sheet belongs to you and the purchase orders belong to someone else. The quote is wrong before it is sent.
The order arrives and somebody retypes the structure into the production system, often simplifying it on the way. Now the job is costed against a bill of material that does not match the one you priced, and the variance report compares two things that were never the same.
Three prints come in while you are halfway through a fourth, and the ones that get answered are the ones from the customer who called twice. Nothing is lost on purpose; it is lost because the queue is an inbox, and an inbox has no sequence and no aging.
Quote the structure you will actually build
Build the estimate on a multi-level bill of material and a routing with real operations rather than a lump-sum hour figure. The breakdown is what makes the quote defensible when a customer pushes back, and it is what makes the variance readable later.
The quote becomes the job
When the order lands, the bill of material and routing you priced carry into the job instead of being retyped. Estimate and actual are then measured against the same structure, which is the whole reason the comparison means anything.
Estimate against actual, per operation
Posted labor, material, and outside processing sit next to what you priced, operation by operation. You find out that the deburr was always triple your allowance, which is a specific fix, rather than that the job lost money, which is not.
Job costing posted as work happens
Every posting carries a job cost object, so cost accumulates on the job while it runs rather than being allocated at close. You can look at a job that is still open and see whether the estimate is holding.
Supplier catalog prices for material and outside processing
Material and outside processing are priced from the supplier catalog, including foreign currency and unit conversion, rather than from a number you remember. When purchasing updates a price, your next quote uses it.
Revisions without losing the old quote
Items, bills of material, and routings are versioned and effective dated, so quoting revision C does not overwrite what you priced for revision B. When a customer asks why the price moved between revisions, both structures are still there and the difference is a line you can point at.
| Task | What Changes |
|---|---|
| Quote one real RFQ in it | Not a historical one. Take the next live print and build it properly: bill of material, routing, operations, material, outside processing. You will find out in an hour whether the structure fits how you think about parts, which no demonstration tells you. |
| Set your rates and burden once | Work center rates and burden go in centrally instead of living in each estimator's copy of a spreadsheet. Two people quoting the same part now reach the same number, and raising the shop rate is one change rather than a hunt through files. |
| Build the bill you would actually run | Resist quoting as a single line with a total. The multi-level structure takes longer the first time and pays for itself at the first variance review, because a cost overrun lands on an operation you can name instead of on the job as a whole. |
| Close the loop on one finished job | Pick a job that just shipped and read estimate against actual down the routing. This is the step that changes how you quote. Most estimators find one operation, usually setup or a finishing step, carrying nearly all of the error. |
| Requote the job that lost money | Take the part you know you are upside down on and rebuild the estimate using the actuals the job produced. You now have a number with evidence behind it, which is a very different conversation to have with the customer than a percentage increase. |
How long should one quote take, start to finish?
A first quote on an unfamiliar part is honest work and stays that way. What should collapse is the repeat: if the part, bill of material, and routing already exist from last time, you are adjusting quantity and rates rather than rebuilding. The saving is in the second quote, not the first.
How many shops actually track their hours against the bid price?
Very few, because it needs time captured at the operation and a job that shares the quote's structure. WorkCell does both: operators clock on at the terminal, and the bill of material and routing you priced carry into the job, so estimate against actual needs no reconciliation.
How do you handle tooling in a quote?
Perishable tooling usually belongs in the work center rate or as a material line on the operation that consumes it, and dedicated fixturing is normally a separate quoted line. WorkCell holds either shape. What it gives you afterwards is whether the allowance you used survived contact with the job.
How do you keep up with inbound RFQs when the front office is slammed?
Quotes become records with an owner, a status, and an age instead of an email thread. You can see what is outstanding and how long it has been sitting, so the sequence is a decision rather than a function of who called most recently. It does not create estimating time, but nothing disappears.
What happens between the quote, the PO, and the invoice?
The quote becomes a sales order, the order drives the job, and cost posts against that job as the work runs. Invoicing and the ledger go to QuickBooks Online, which is a live integration. One chain of records, so the thing you quoted is the thing that gets invoiced.
Can WorkCell estimate cycle time from a model or a print?
No. It does not read a STEP file or a drawing and produce machining times, and it will not pretend to. You bring the times, from experience or from a CAM simulation, and WorkCell keeps them against the part so the next quote starts from the last one rather than from nothing.
See it from your seat.
Send us a print you quoted recently and we will build the estimate in front of you, structure and all.