Print estimates drafted from the RFQ, with every price left to your estimator.

A buyer emails a PDF and two lines: 5,000 and 10,000, tri-fold, 100 gloss, mail to the list. Before any cost gets worked out, your estimator has to settle the flat and finished size, the stock by grade and weight, ink per side, bleeds, folds and binding, versions, proofs, mailing and delivery. Most of that reading is finding what was said and noticing what wasn't.

For the test, AI reads copies of requests your desk has answered and completes the specification side of your estimate, line by line, showing where in the request each line came from. Anything left open turns into a question worded for the customer. Price fields stay blank, and no customer sees a draft.

Eighty pounds of what. A paper's weight means little without its grade. The Government Publishing Office's paper standards, September 2019 edition, weigh text and book papers as 500 sheets at 25 by 38 inches, cover papers at 20 by 26, and writing papers at 17 by 22. So "80 lb gloss" can name two very different sheets. GPO sidesteps the wording by ordering stock with JCP codes, a letter for the class and a number for the grade: A80 is an opacified text, L20 a vellum-finish cover. Each draft copies grade and basis exactly as the customer wrote them and asks when the request gives only a number.

Two sizes and a page count. A folded piece has the flat size it is printed and cut to and the finished size it folds down to, and many requests state one of the two. Page counts carry a similar trap. A saddle-stitched book runs in multiples of four, and one GPO program spelled out that its 16-page magazine "includes self-cover", where another buyer's 16 pages might mean 16 inside plus a separate cover stock. Whether art runs off the edge decides the sheet it needs, so a draft notes bleeds as stated and raises them when nothing is said.

A quantity break is not a version. Breaks price one job at several counts. Versions are different pieces: a regional edition with a new price panel, a language swap, a variable-data run where each sheet differs. That same GPO program's bid abstract priced makeready and setup apart from running per hundred copies, which is the arithmetic that makes the distinction matter, because versions decide how many setups a job takes. Ink has its own shorthand, with 4/4, 4/1 and 4/0 read front over back and a named Pantone on top of process making a fifth color. The draft writes these in your estimate's terms, and how many forms or plates they mean stays with your estimator.

Proofs and mail are spec lines too. The trade customs say press proofs aren't furnished unless the quotation requires them in writing, so "we'd like to see it first" has to be pinned down. GPO's program listed hard copy proofs and PDF soft proofs as separate prices, and judged soft proofs on text flow, image position and color breaks, never on color match. USPS holds a folded self-mailer to between 5 and 10-1/2 inches long and 3-1/2 and 6 inches high, 12 panels and 3 ounces, with the last fold along the bottom on most pieces, and raises its minimum paper from 70-pound to 80-pound book grade once a piece passes an ounce. Flats stop at 15 by 12 inches and 3/4 inch thick. The draft records what the request gave and lists what mailing still needs to know. Your mailing staff has the last word on what qualifies, and none of this is legal or postal advice.

Recycled claims, and what your reviewer watches. When a customer wants a recycled-paper line printed on the piece, the FTC's Green Guides at 16 CFR 260.13 say a claim about a partly recycled product should state how much by weight, and that singling out post-consumer content needs its own substantiation. A draft flags the request and the stock it depends on; wording stays with the customer and counsel, and this is not legal advice. Your reviewer, often the lead estimator, checks every spec line against the estimate you sent and every question against what your desk really asked. A request too thin to estimate should come back as questions, never as a guess.

When your reviewer says yes, new requests get a draft spec and a question list for roughly a month.

Your estimator corrects the lines, asks the customer what's missing and sets the price, and only a person sends an estimate. The comparison carries on through the live month with the same table.