Producing a quote with the company’s own prices and format

First working version
< 2 h

Goal

A skill that takes one sentence about what has to be quoted and for whom, looks the client up in the company’s file and every item in the price list, builds the quote on the usual template with the number that comes next in the series and hands it over with the arithmetic checked and the row added to the register.

How it works

First the user says in one sentence what has to be quoted and for whom, “make me a quote for Talleres Ruiz, twelve aluminium windows 120 by 100 and the fitting”, and the skill turns that into quote lines: item, unit, quantity and client.

Then it looks the client up in the client file, by registered name, by tax number or by the name they are actually called, and copies the whole record with the address, the payment terms and any agreed discount, which is exactly what gets lost when a quote is made by duplicating last month’s. It looks for each item in the price list by meaning rather than by literal match, because in a price list the same product is written three different ways. No amount comes from anywhere else: if an item is not in the price list, it is not estimated.

What it cannot look up it asks in one go, as clickable options: the missing price, the discount when none is agreed, how long the offer stands, or which of the two clients with the same surname is the right one. They go in a single round because three questions in a row cost more time than filling in the quote by hand.

With that it builds the document on the company’s template, or on the last quote issued when there is no template, and replaces only the data: the logo, the typography, the column order and the legal text in the footer stay as they are. The number comes from the series by looking at what the last one was, in the same format, and no number is reused or skipped. The arithmetic is done and checked: quantity times price on every line, subtotal, discount, tax and total, with the rounding and the tax basis the template uses.

To finish it checks everything against the original sources: every price is compared with the price-list row it came from, the client details with their record character by character and the number with the quotes already issued. It hands over the document, adds the row to the register so the next number comes out right, and says what it asked, which prices it used and which price-list date the work was based on.

Agent steps
Deliverable
  • The numbered quote, in the same format and with the same face as the ones the company already issues.
  • The row added to the quote register: number, date, client, amount and validity.
  • The new client’s record ready to be created, when they were not in the file.
  • A report with which price-list row each price came from, what was asked, which number was assigned and the result of every check.
Stack
  • Claude Cowork
  • A Claude skill of our own
  • Excel and Word skills
  • The price list and the client file
  • The register of the series
  • Verification against the sources

Why it matters

Making a quote is mostly looking things up: the price in the price list, the client’s details in their record, which number comes next and whether the sums add up. An assistant reads the spreadsheets the company already has and builds the document on its own template, with nobody copying a figure from one file into another.

What could come next

  1. 01Flag the quotes reaching their expiry date with no answer. The register already stores the date, but looking at it is nobody’s job, so the offer lapses and the follow-up call happens late or not at all.
  2. 02Turn the accepted quote into an order without retyping the lines, which today get copied by hand from one document to another with the usual risk of being copied wrong.
  3. 03Update the ERP: take the client, the current price list and the number in the series from there, and leave the quote created against that account. While all of it lives in Excel, the good quote ends up in a folder and somebody copies it across by hand afterwards, if they remember.

Worth knowing

  • legal

    A quote is an offer: it binds whoever signs it and it goes out with the client’s details inside, personal data when the client is an individual. Where the price list and the client file are processed matters as much as the arithmetic adding up.

  • dependency

    The skill is only as good as the price list. If the pricing spreadsheet is out of date, the quote comes out out of date and adding up. What it does is say which row and which date each price came from, not guess which one is right.

  • dependency

    The numbering is only reliable while the series lives in one place. If someone issues a quote by hand from another machine in the meantime, two offers can end up with the same number. The skill flags a gap or a duplicate when it finds one, but it cannot prevent it.

  • future

    Whatever is written down nowhere gets asked about: an item missing from the price list, a discount that was never agreed, a payment term only the sales rep knows. The quote comes out on its own when the price list is complete, and comes out with questions when it is not.

Contact

Let's have a call. In 30 minutes I can tell you whether I can help.

Email address (enable JavaScript to reveal)LinkedIn