Quote automation that prices only from your own past quotes and rates.

Four parts, in every industry. A request arrives. Someone finds what the business charged or spent the last time it did similar work. An estimator, quoter, account manager or service writer adds the judgment no record holds. Then a quote goes out under your name, and in the goods trades that last step carries legal weight. Under section 2-205 of the Uniform Commercial Code, a merchant's signed written offer that says it will be held open can't be revoked during the stated time just because the buyer gave nothing for the promise, though never for longer than three months, and if that promise is printed on the buyer's own form, the seller has to sign that term separately. The line saying how long a quote stays open is a term of the deal, not boilerplate.

What the request looks like. Manufacturers, machine shops and molders get prints, and some prints say nothing about a dimension's tolerance except a note such as ISO 2768-m: the medium one of the four general-tolerance classes in that standard, which runs fine, medium, coarse and very coarse. Fabricators and plumbing and other distributors get a bid set and work from a takeoff or a bid list. A property manager sends a few lines and some photos, and a dealer's service writer starts from a technician's inspection sheet. The request changes shape from one industry to the next. The price never comes with it; only your own records can supply that.

A bid a contractor relies on can bind you. A fabricator often prices its part of a job for a general contractor, who carries that number into its own bid. In Drennan v. Star Paving (1958), the California Supreme Court held a paving subcontractor to the bid a general contractor had relied on to win the work, and in C & K Engineering Contractors v. Amber Steel (1978) it applied the same reasoning to a company that had bid to install reinforcing steel and then refused the job. Other states decide this under their own case law, and none of this is legal advice. It is one more reason every price in a draft traces to a record and a line with nothing behind it stays blank.

Tooling and freight sit on lines of their own. A molder's tool is a separate quote, often from an outside toolmaker, and it carries its own rules: in Michigan, a moldbuilder that permanently records its name and address on a mold and files a financing statement holds a lien on that mold for what it is owed, whether or not the mold is still in its shop. Freight terms differ by where the goods travel. Under UCC 2-319, F.O.B. the place of shipment leaves the seller the cost and risk of getting the goods into the carrier's hands, while F.O.B. destination has the seller carry them to the named place, and the International Trade Administration's guide lists FOB among the four Incoterms 2020 rules for sea and inland waterway transport. A quote copied from an old one goes wrong on lines like these as often as on the price.

Ceilings and labor guides on the service side. A facility customer's work order often carries a not-to-exceed amount, and work beyond it waits for an approved proposal. Federal buyers write the same idea into their rules: FAR 16.601 requires a time-and-materials order to include a ceiling price the contractor exceeds at its own risk. At an equipment dealer, the limit is time, set by the shop's own time guide or what the same repair took before. Across all eight pages, the calls no record can make stay with your people: whether a tolerance can be held, a mold's cycle time and cavities, whether a valve is lead free, margin, lead time and the final number. Each industry page sets out what to send, how its test is scored and its one hard limit.