Automatic project quotes

Ask most project-based professional service firms how they put together a project quote, and the answer is usually some version of the same story. There’s a spreadsheet, probably a few versions of it, that gets duplicated from a previous project, updated with the new client’s details, adjusted for the current scope, and sent out after someone has spent an hour making sure nothing was missed or left over from the last job it was copied from. It works, most of the time, but it’s slow, it’s manual, and the margin for error is real. A line item carried over from the wrong project, a labor rate that wasn’t updated, an expense category that got deleted by accident, any of these can produce a quote that doesn’t accurately reflect the actual cost of the work.

Version 4 of Feng Office replaces that process with something considerably simpler.

When a project is created from a pre-configured template in Feng Office, the financial structure of that project is already in place. Tasks are created, budgeted expenses are linked to their corresponding tasks, and labor categories are assigned. The template carries all of that, so the moment the project exists in the system, the data needed to produce a complete price quote is already there.

Using the Project Price Quote report, that data becomes a full client-facing quote at the proposal stage. There is no separate assembly step, no pulling numbers from different places, and no manual checking to make sure everything is included. The template was configured to include everything, and the quote reflects that.

The price quote generated from a template includes the task structure, the associated budgeted expenses, and the labor categories tied to each task. It works across contract types, whether the project is time-and-materials, fixed-fee, or a hybrid of both. The quote reflects the actual billing structure of the project, not a generic summary, because the template was built to match the way that type of work is actually contracted and delivered.

The scope and pricing for a given project type are defined once in the template. Every quote for that type of work starts from the same validated foundation. There is no blank spreadsheet to fill in, no previous project to copy and clean up, and no risk of scope items being forgotten because they were never part of the starting point.

The path from “we need to quote this project” to “the quote is ready” is now a matter of launching the template, confirming any variable inputs specific to that project, and running the Project Price Quote report. The steps in between that used to involve manual data entry, formula checking, and cross-referencing against previous projects are gone.

When quotes are generated from a shared template rather than from individual spreadsheets, pricing is consistent regardless of who produces the proposal. The rates, the expense categories, and the task structure are the same every time because they come from the same source. That consistency protects margins and makes proposals easier to review and approve internally before they go to the client.

For project-based firms, the proposal stage is where projects are won or lost. A quote that takes too long to produce creates friction in the sales process. A quote that’s missing costs creates problems later when the project is underway, and the budget doesn’t cover the actual work. Version 4 addresses both. The quote is faster because the template does the assembly work, and it’s more complete because the template was built to include everything that type of project requires.

For firms that regularly propose similar project types, that reliability compounds over time. Every proposal for that project type is built on the same foundation, refined once in the template rather than corrected individually in a dozen different spreadsheets.

Version 4 makes project quoting a function of the project management system rather than a separate manual process. Launch a template, and the financial structure is already in place. Run the Project Price Quote report, and the proposal is ready. No spreadsheet to copy, no line items to check, no scope to reassemble from memory. Just a complete, consistent quote built from a foundation your firm has already validated.

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See a complete project quote generated from a template in under a minute

The gap between a manual quoting process and one driven by a pre-configured template is easiest to see side by side. You tell us what your current proposal process looks like, and we’ll show you how Version 4 replaces most of it.

• Watch a full project quote generate from a template launch through to the Project Price Quote report
• Walk through how tasks, expenses, and labor categories are configured in the template and what the output looks like
• Ask anything about variable inputs, contract types, and how the quote handles fixed-fee versus time-and-materials work
• Get a clear picture of how much of your current manual quoting process this eliminates before you commit to anything