CPQ Software for Manufacturing
Estimating and quoting from a print, priced on real material, labour and outside processing, and converted straight into the order.
CPQ software turns a customer's requirements into a valid, priced quote: configuration rules select the allowed options, pricing applies cost and margin, and the quote converts to an order. In manufacturing, a true configurator also generates the bill of material and routing the configured product will be built to.
Configurable quoting that carries structure and pricing into the order.
CPQ is three words and most shops only need two of them. A manufacturer selling a catalogue product with options — a conveyor in nine lengths, a cabinet in four finishes, a pump with eleven impeller choices — needs the configure step, because the hard part is stopping a salesperson from selling a combination that cannot be built. A make-to-print shop quoting from a customer's drawing has nothing to configure; the hard part is pricing material, labour and outside processing accurately enough to win the job and still make money on it. WorkCell does both halves against the same records. Quoting and estimating price material, labour and outside processing off the supplier catalogue and the routing, quotes revise rather than overwrite so the version the customer accepted is still readable, and a won quote becomes the sales order and then the job without anybody retyping it. Where the product is ordered by option rather than by print, the option set resolves to the items and bills that build it, so what you priced is what the shop releases.
Estimators and owners at make-to-order and make-to-print shops who quote from customer drawings, win on price and lead time, and need the quote's assumptions to survive into the job.
Rates, scrap factors and setup assumptions are baked into formulas only the estimator understands, and the file is copied for every new job. When that person is out, quoting stops. When they leave, the pricing logic of the business leaves with them, and nobody can explain how last year's numbers were reached.
A quote is accepted, and somebody re-enters the lines, quantities, prices and delivery dates into the order. Transcription errors become invoicing disputes, and because the two documents are unrelated records, nothing compares what was promised against what was actually sold.
The customer asks for a price at a different quantity, the quote is edited, and the version they are holding no longer exists anywhere. When they order against a number from three weeks ago, there is no record of what that number covered, and the argument is unwinnable.
Bar stock was quoted at last year's price, the mill has moved twice since, and the foreign-currency purchase is converted on a guess. On a thin-margin job, a stale material price is the whole margin, and the loss only appears when the job closes.
Heat treat, plating and coating get added as a lump sum because getting a real vendor price means waiting. The quote goes out with a placeholder, the placeholder becomes the price, and the vendor invoice settles the difference in the customer's favour.
Estimating from the print, line by line
A quote line carries its own estimate: the material, the operations, the setup and run times, and the quantities it was priced at. The assumptions stay on the record instead of in a formula bar, so another estimator can read the quote and understand how the price was reached.
Material, labour and outside processing priced separately
Each cost element is estimated in its own right rather than rolled into a rate per piece. That is what makes a losing quote diagnosable afterwards: you can see whether the material was wrong, the cycle time was optimistic, or the plating vendor was never really priced.
Material cost from the supplier catalogue
Supplier catalogue entries carry the prices and units a vendor actually quotes, so material on an estimate comes from a record rather than from recall. Units and currencies convert through to the estimate instead of being normalised by hand in a spreadsheet.
Quote revisions that keep the prior version
Changing a price or a quantity creates a new revision of the quote rather than editing the one the customer is holding. When an order arrives against an older number, the version it was priced at is still there to read.
Quote to order without retyping
An accepted quote converts into a sales order carrying its lines, prices and quantities, and the order drives the job. There is one chain from the estimate to the job cost, so what was promised and what was built are the same record.
Multi-currency pricing
Quotes and the purchases behind them can be priced in the customer's or the supplier's currency, with conversion handled through to costing rather than approximated at the point of quoting. A foreign-currency bar price stops being a rounding exercise.
Quotes with revisions, multi-currency pricing, and conversion straight into an order.
EngineeringThe BOM and routing revisions an estimate is built against and a job is released on.
PurchasingSupplier catalogue prices and units feeding material and outside processing cost.
AccountingJob cost objects every posting is stamped with, so a quote can be judged against the outcome.
Quoting in an ERP prices a line a human specified. CPQ derives the specification first, from rules, then prices it. The practical test is who decides what the product is: if the estimator reads a drawing and decides, that is ERP quoting, and buying CPQ adds a rules engine with nothing to rule on.
CPQ vs CRMCRM owns the relationship and the pipeline: who the contact is, what stage the deal is at, what was said. CPQ owns the number on the document. They overlap because the quote is the artefact a salesperson needs, which is why CRM vendors bolt on quoting and CPQ vendors bolt on pipeline, usually badly in both directions.
CPQ vs ECCA real configurator generates a new bill of material and routing per order, which means engineering change control has to govern structures nobody authored by hand. That interaction is the hardest part of manufacturing CPQ, and it is the reason a configurator is not a feature you add to a quoting screen.
CPQ vs MRPThe point of a configured quote is that the structure it produces can be planned and bought against without retyping. That handoff is where CPQ implementations fail, because a configurator that produces a drawing rather than a bill of material has only moved the work. In WorkCell the configured structure is a bill of material and a routing, which is exactly what the MRP run nets demand against, so the quote, the plan and the purchase order all read the same structure.
Machining and fabrication shops quote from customer prints, where the work is estimating rather than configuring.
Aerospace & DefenseLow-volume builds to prime contractor drawings, priced per revision and per quantity break.
Industrial EquipmentBuilt-to-order machines and weldments quoted long before the detailed design is finished.
Plastics & RubberMoulding and extrusion quotes turn on material price, cycle time and secondary operations.
The database the quote, the order, the job and the cost all live on, with nothing to reconcile.
CRMThe customers, contacts and pipeline the quote is raised against.
ECCThe BOM and routing revisions an estimate is priced on and a job is released against.
APSFinite capacity scheduling, so the lead time you quote is one the floor can actually hold.
Is WorkCell a product configurator?
Options and variants are held as items and multi-level bills of material, so a selected combination resolves to a real structure the shop can build and the planner can buy against rather than to a document somebody has to interpret. Quoting and estimating price that structure off the supplier catalogue and the routing. Where you already run a dedicated CPQ, the REST API moves the configured option set in and the priced quote back out.
Do I need CPQ or just quoting in my ERP?
Ask who decides what the product is. If an estimator reads a drawing and decides, quoting in your ERP is the right tool and a rules engine has nothing to work on. If a salesperson picks options that could be combined into something unbuildable, you need real CPQ.
Can WorkCell generate a BOM and routing from a quote?
Yes. An estimate is built against bills of material and routings an engineer authored, and the job is released on those exact revisions, so there is no re-entry step between what the estimator priced and what the shop runs. The actuals come back against the same structure, which is what makes a quoted margin comparable to an earned one.
Does WorkCell have a customer self-service quoting portal?
Quotes are produced in WorkCell and sent out as documents from your own domain, and the acceptance comes back onto the quote it answers, so the version the customer agreed to is the version that becomes the order. Where you want a buyer configuring and ordering themselves, the REST API and webhooks put the item, the price and the order behind your own storefront, which is how the Shopify integration already works.
Can I quote in my customer's currency?
Yes. Quotes support multi-currency pricing, and conversion carries through to the purchases and costing behind them rather than being approximated at the quoting stage. A foreign-currency material price arrives on the estimate as a converted value, not as a rounded guess.
What happens to a quote when the customer accepts it?
It converts into a sales order carrying its lines, prices and quantities, and that order drives the job. Nothing is retyped, so there is one chain from the estimate through the order to the job cost, and the comparison between quoted and actual is on the same data.
One system instead of a standalone CPQ.
Tell us how you quote today and whether you are configuring a product or estimating a print, and we will tell you straight whether WorkCell fits.