In short
Quote automation means a system builds a draft quote from the incoming request, the current price list and previous quotes. The salesperson reviews it, corrects it and sends it. Searching and typing get faster; the price, the discount and the decision to send stay with a person.
Key points
- With a quote put together by hand, a lot of time goes on searching and copying: price list, old quotes, terms.
- Automation takes over that part. It prepares a draft; it doesn't send quotes.
- A quote that goes out is a commitment in the company's name, so the send button stays with the salesperson.
- Don't go live without validation rules, a log and human approval.
- In our view, quoting is a good first process to automate: there is a lot of repetitive work in it, and it is easy to measure how much time it takes today.
How is a quote put together by hand?
At many wholesalers, manufacturers and service companies, a quote is assembled by hand from Excel and old quotes. The process typically looks like this:
- 01
The request arrives by e-mail, by phone or through a web form, often as free text.
- 02
The salesperson looks up the items in the price list and checks the item numbers.
- 03
They pull out the customer's last similar quote to see what price and discount they got.
- 04
They copy the items, quantities, delivery and payment terms into a template.
- 05
They review it, send it, and note down somewhere that the quote has gone out.
Only one of these steps is the decision: setting the price and the discount. The rest is searching, copying and typing. Those are also the steps where errors creep in: a mistyped quantity, an old price, a wrong item number.
What exactly does quote automation do?
Quote automation is a process that assembles a draft quote from the incoming request, the price list and previous quotes, and puts it in front of the salesperson for approval. The draft is created in the same template and the same system the company already uses.
Step by step:
- 01
Intake. The system watches the e-mail address or form that receives quote requests.
- 02
Interpretation. Artificial intelligence reads who is asking, for what, how much and by when. This is where it really helps: it turns a sentence like “we'd need forty boxes of the usual for early next week” into line items.
- 03
Matching. It checks the items against the current price list and item numbers. Where a match is uncertain, it flags it rather than guessing.
- 04
History. It looks at the customer's previous quotes and orders: what price, discount and terms they got.
- 05
Draft. It creates the draft quote in the usual template, in the CRM or in the invoicing tool.
- 06
Checks. The rules run: price per the price list, discount limit, items that exist.
- 07
Approval. The salesperson reviews it, corrects it and sends it. Every step is logged.
How is an automated draft quote different from a CRM template?
A CRM template fills in data someone has already entered. Automation assembles the items from the incoming request itself. The two don't exclude each other: the draft can be built in the existing CRM template.
According to HubSpot's help pages, a quote typically starts from a deal record, takes its line items from there, can be added to from the product library, and can require approval. Pipedrive's Smart Docs templates are filled with the deal's fields and the products linked to it. Both speed things up if the items are already in the system. The question is who puts them there.
| Excel and old quotes | Template in the CRM | Automated draft quote | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who enters the line items? | the salesperson, by hand | the salesperson, in the CRM | the system, from the request |
| Where does the price come from? | price list, old file, memory | the product library | the price list and the customer's history |
| Free-text request | processed by hand | processed by hand | turned into line items, uncertain ones flagged |
| Who sends it? | the salesperson | the salesperson | the salesperson |
- Who enters the line items?
- Excel and old quotesthe salesperson, by hand
- Template in the CRMthe salesperson, in the CRM
- Automated draft quotethe system, from the request
- Where does the price come from?
- Excel and old quotesprice list, old file, memory
- Template in the CRMthe product library
- Automated draft quotethe price list and the customer's history
- Free-text request
- Excel and old quotesprocessed by hand
- Template in the CRMprocessed by hand
- Automated draft quoteturned into line items, uncertain ones flagged
- Who sends it?
- Excel and old quotesthe salesperson
- Template in the CRMthe salesperson
- Automated draft quotethe salesperson
Why do the decision and the price stay with the salesperson?
A quote is a commitment in the company's name: price, deadline, terms. Under section 6:64(1) of the Hungarian Civil Code, anyone who makes a statement that clearly expresses an intention to contract and covers the essential points is bound by it (as quoted in a 2021 study in the Miskolci Jogi Szemle). A detailed quote can therefore bind the company. This is general information, not legal advice.
On top of that, artificial intelligence can make mistakes: it can misread a quantity, or match an item with a similar name. That is why we build in three safeguards:
- Validation rules: without approval, the price can't go below the set minimum, the discount can't exceed the customer's limit, and every item has to be in the price list.
- Log: every step can be traced, from the incoming request to the approval.
- Human approval: nothing goes to the customer until the salesperson has pressed the send button.
So the speed is in the draft. The responsibility stays where it was: with the salesperson.
Which companies should automate their quotes?
It pays off when many quotes with a similar structure go out and there is a maintained price list. Typical examples are wholesalers, manufacturers working from a catalogue, and service providers that price from packages or itemised fees.
It pays off less if only a few quotes are made a month, or if every quote is a bespoke design job. A draft can help there too, but the gain is smaller. Before building anything, it is worth measuring:
- how many quotes go out a month;
- how long it takes from request to sending;
- how many quotes have to be corrected afterwards, and why;
- where the price list is today, and how up to date it is.
What does this mean for a company of 10 to 250 people?
A company of 10 to 250 people doesn't need to buy new quoting software to get quotes out faster. Automation is built alongside the tools it already has. This is how we would do it:
- 01
AI Potential Audit (two weeks): we look at how quotes are made today, where the price list is and in what form requests arrive, and we measure the starting point.
- 02
Sprint: we build one process, drafting the quote, from start to finish, connected to the existing systems, for example Pipedrive, HubSpot, MiniCRM, SAP Business One, Számlázz.hu, Billingo, Excel or Google Sheets.
- 03
Handover and aftercare: up to 30 days of aftercare, while the team gets used to the approval step.
- 04
Operations: after go-live we run, monitor and update it.
The data stays on European servers, in Hungary, Germany or Finland. We use artificial intelligence models from Anthropic, Google or OpenAI on terms under which the provider does not keep the data.
Where not to start: with the system sending quotes on its own, or with the most complex, bespoke project pricing. And if the price list lives in three different Excel files, sort that out first. If you'd like to read more about how we build AI automation, you'll find it on our website.