Custom Quoting Systems for Job Shops

You have more opportunities than you have time to quote.

Every quoting software promises to fix this. None of them know how your shop actually works. That's the problem.

From the shop floor

"I could easily spend 40 hrs/week quoting. A lot of RFQ's getting neglected over here."

Shop owner, $2M/yr revenue // Practical Machinist

"Every shop thinks a bit different in quoting. Straightforward and simple to use for one is crippled and worthless to another."

CarbideBob // Practical Machinist

"Our engineer has been quoting in Quattro Pro and Excel for 20 plus years. His spreadsheet requires a lot of experience... He is going to retire one day."

Shop owner // r/manufacturing

"We have more opportunities than we have time to quote."

Owner, 22-machine production shop // Practical Machinist, Jan 2026

"Nobody is happy with any of the available solutions."

CNC Cookbook survey of 100 shops

Why software keeps failing you

Your machines aren't their machines.
Your markup logic isn't their markup logic.
Your materials, your setup times, your customer relationships. All different.
Software needs standardization. Your shop runs on experience.

A $16K bid from one shop is $10K from the shop down the road. That's not a software problem. That's two shops with different machines, different processes, and different logic. No off-the-shelf tool can account for that.

A different approach

What if your quoting system was built around how you already think?

Not a generic tool. A custom system that captures your shop's logic. Your machines, your processes, your pricing rules, encoded into something your team can actually use.
When the owner isn't available, quotes still go out. Consistent, accurate, following the logic you've developed over decades.
When the estimator retires, the knowledge doesn't leave with them. It's in the system, documented and usable.
Your shop, your logic, your way. Just faster.

I want to build custom quoting systems for shops like yours. Not another piece of software you'll abandon in six months. A system designed around how your specific shop works, built by someone who understands why the generic ones don't.

The numbers

$91K/yr

Average cost of quoting inefficiency for a mid-size shop

40 hrs/wk

Time shop owners spend on quoting alone

85%

RFQs that go unanswered industry-wide

$65-120K

What shops pay a dedicated estimator per year

51%

Average quote-to-book ratio. Best shops hit 70%.

What I'd like to build

This is the direction, not a finished product. The right version comes from understanding how your shop actually works.

01 Your pricing logic captured in a system anyone on your team can use, not just the one person who "just knows."
02 Similar-parts lookup from your own job history. Not some generic database. Your parts, your actuals, your margins.
03 Material cost updates that match your suppliers, not national averages that don't reflect what you actually pay.
04 Quote templates that reflect your shop's capabilities. Your machines, your tolerances, your setup times.
05 A system that gets smarter as you use it, because it learns from your data, not someone else's.

Let's test this

Send me your toughest RFQ.

I'll sketch out how your quoting logic could work as a system. Free, no strings. If it's useful, we talk about building it. If not, you got a free analysis of your quoting process.

Or if you'd rather just talk: Book a 20-minute conversation

Who's behind this

I'm a tech consultant based in Germany. I'm not a machinist. I build systems.

I've spent months reading every Practical Machinist thread about quoting, studying why Paperless Parts disappoints, and analyzing why Costimator doesn't work. The pattern is always the same: every shop is different, and software that ignores that is useless.

I want to build something better. Custom quoting systems that match how each shop actually thinks. But the right version comes from talking to people who live this every day. That's why I'd like to hear from you.

Christo Wilken