Now You can Create your own Custom Estimation Tool Quickly and Easily

No Programming Required!

If you are in the business of designing and implementing complex projects and systems, you know how important a professional and complete quotation can be to your success.  When you are performing a fixed bid project, accurate pricing is essential to your profitability.  You also know that creating a professional proposal can be a time-consuming and labor-intensive undertaking.  Yet speedy turnaround of the proposal after meeting with the prospective customer is essential to your success.  Chances are, multiple companies have been asked to provide quotations, and quick turnaround can make the difference between success and failure.

A professional proposal contains:

• Detailed reports of the services and items that will be provided, and
• A clear explanation of your pricing.

Depending on the type of business you are in, a drawing of the proposed design may also be a critical component of the quotation you provide.

Industry-specific design and estimation tools may be available to you, but often they do not provide the functionality you need.  Some allow you to draw designs, but don't provide pricing calculations and reports.  Some are good for quoting products but not labor (and vice versa).  Some do all these things, but are inflexible in their data and calculations.  Very few suggest related items, to ensure you generate a comprehensive quotation, and if you do find a tool that does all these things... well, it's probably very expensive.

Quotation Apprentice and Quotation Apprentice for Visio

Quotation Apprentice is a text-based tool that allows you to generate custom quotations when drawings are not required.  By clicking on a type of item, a dialog box appears that lets you select a specific item from your database and size it if appropriate.  Related items (and you've determined what is 'related') also appear for selection.  In the background, product and labor pricing is constantly updating, based on your rules and data.  When your selections are complete, a set of professional reports are available for printing or export to other applications.

Quotation Apprentice for Visio uses Microsoft's Visio drawing platform for its user interface.  Key system components are represented by shapes you have selected and put on Visio stencils, and can be dragged and dropped on a scale drawing of the design.  When the shape is first dropped on the drawing page, a dialog box appears -- letting you select a specific item from your database and size it if appropriate -- and suggests related items.  Labor and pricing calculations based on sizes and quantities are calculated automatically.  Shapes can be moved and resized to fit the drawing, using standard Visio tools, and the model of the design changes accordingly, including quantity and pricing changes.  In the background, a set of professional reports are constantly updating with the current item list and pricing.  When the proposal is complete, it can be printed or exported to a variety of other applications.

Your Data, Your Rules

Quotation Apprentice is a generalized version of Apprentice Systems' powerful product configuration tool, which utilizes a Knowledge Pack -- a folder of information -- to automatically generate a custom quotation and design tool.  All that is required to create your own Knowledge Pack, and therefore your own custom Quotation Apprentice, is the following:

• Updating a Microsoft Access database with your items and prices, based on the sample database provided

If you are using Quotation Apprentice for Visio, you also need to provide:

• Stencils with Visio shapes for each category of item (e.g. a tree shape to represent all trees in the database)
• A Visio template for the drawing background, or utilize the template provided

With just an hour or two of data entry, you can have a powerful, customized design and estimation tool that will save you hundreds of hours in proposal-generation time!

Knowledge Packs will also be created and released over time to create out-of-the-box solutions for different industries.  If you are an expert in a particular industry and would like to develop a Knowledge Pack for sale on our website, contact us and let us know your ideas!

Pricing

Quotation Apprentice:  $495  (Software required:  Windows XP, Microsoft Office)

Quotation Apprentice for Visio:  $995  (Software required:  Windows XP, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Visio 2003)

Landscaping Knowledge Pack:  Currently free with Quotation Apprentice for Visio (Learn more about Landscaping KP)

Quotation Apprentice Home Theater Designer:  $995  (Software required:  Windows XP, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Visio 2003) (Learn about the Home Theater Designer)

To learn more about Quotation Apprentice, and what it can do for you, take the Video Tour, or download a 14 Day Evaluation copy of the software.  Make sure to get the Landscaping Knowledge Pack, currently offered for free with Quotation Apprentice, for use as a sample database.