Quotation portal · built once, fitted to your trade
Quotation software that shows the finished PDF while you build it
A quotation portal is a quote builder that assembles every quote from 5 sections — cover, technical specification, price and bank, terms and sign-off — with your letterhead, terms and bank details held once. The branded PDF renders beside the form as you type, so what you send is exactly what you saw.
Built first for a lift company with 19 years in the trade. For firms quoting in Canada and India.
What it is
What is a quotation portal, and what does it do?
A quotation portal is a small, private piece of quotation software that lives on the web and belongs to your business. Your team logs in, opens a new quote and works through it section by section. It is built for the kind of quote that is really a document — a cover letter, a technical specification, a price page with bank details, terms, and a signature — not a single price on an email.
- Five-section quote builder5 sectionsCover, technical specification, price and bank, terms and sign-off, each with its own progress, so you can see what is left before it goes out.
- Live preview of the finished PDFAlways onThe preview is drawn the same way as the final PDF, so what staff see while editing is what the client receives.
- Letterhead, certificate and bank details held onceTyped onceChange a bank detail or a certificate number in one place and every new quote carries it.
- A PDF and a Word twin of every quoteBothBoth come from your approved template, with your logo and watermark, so nobody hand-formats a quotation in Word again.
Anatomy of a quote
| Section | Typed for this job | Held once |
|---|---|---|
| 01 Cover | Client, reference, subject | Letterhead, certificate |
| 02 Technical specification | The spec, line by line | Your trade’s fields |
| 03 Price & bank | Price lines, total | Bank details |
| 04 Terms | Only what changes | Standard terms |
| 05 Sign-off | Date | Signatory, stamp |
Specs retyped by hand
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The quote is assembled, not rewritten from last month’s file.
One document, five sections
How it works
How does the quote builder work, section by section?
Every quote is built the same way, in the same order, so a new starter produces the same quality of document as the owner. Each section fills its own part of the PDF; the progress beside it tells you what is still missing.
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01
Cover
Pick a saved client and their details fill in. The reference number is issued automatically and never repeats. The letterhead is already there, because it is held once.
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02
Technical specification
Each product has its own spec sheet — the sections and fields your trade quotes on — laid out as the table the client reads, so a wrong figure is caught on the page, not after it is sent.
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03
Price & bank
Price lines, tax and the total, with your tax numbers and bank details pulled from the one place they are kept. Nobody copies an account number out of an old email.
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04
Terms
Payment milestones and your standard clauses come from lists you set once, so every quote carries the current wording and not last year’s.
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05
Sign-off
The authorised signatory and stamp close the document. Save it, then download the PDF or Word file, email it or share it on WhatsApp from the same screen.
The real portal · quotations
How does the quotation software show which quotes need chasing?
Every quote you make is saved here and searchable by client, quote number, amount or date. Above the list sits a performance overview; beside it, the drafts that have gone quiet.
- Search every quoteFind what was sent to a client in seconds, instead of digging through sent mail and desktop folders.
- Value quoted, quotes this month, average value, win rate, acceptedSee how the month is going without building a spreadsheet at the end of it.
- Needs attention and pipeline healthDrafts left idle are listed with how many days they have sat, so a quote is not lost because nobody finished it.
- PDF, Word, Gmail with the PDF attached, WhatsAppEvery way of sending a quote is one click from the list. No copying quote details into an email by hand.
- Duplicate, mark accepted, restoreA past quote becomes the start of the next one, wins are recorded where they happen, and a quote deleted by mistake comes back.
The real portal · clients
How does the quote builder keep your client list?
Every client you quote is saved. Pick one on a new quote and their details fill in.
- Saved from the first quoteNobody retypes a company name, contact person or phone number for the second quote.
- Total quoted and number of quotes per clientSee who you quote most, and for how much, before you price their next job.
- Contact person, phone and email on one recordWhoever picks up the follow-up has the right person to call.
- Edit once, restore if deletedA detail corrected here is correct on every new quote, and a client removed by mistake can be brought back.
The real portal · repair catalogue
Can quotation software price repairs and spare parts?
For the lift trade the portal carries a repair catalogue of around 650 parts and charges — rope and traction, doors, controller and electrical, cabin, hydraulics, consumables, labour. Nothing in it is locked. In another trade it holds your parts, units or service lines.
- Around 650 items, by categoryA repair quote is picked from a list rather than written from memory, so a part is not forgotten or mispriced.
- Switch any item quotable, retag it, price itThe catalogue matches what you actually sell, at today’s price.
- HSN code on each itemThe tax code travels with the part instead of living in one person’s head.
- Add your ownA new part or charge goes in the day you start offering it.
The real portal · setup
Where are the letterhead, bank details and quote numbers kept?
Setup is the one screen that holds everything a quote carries that is not about this job.
- Letterhead: address, phones, GST numbers, certification, places servedChange it once and every new quote carries it. No quote goes out on an old address.
- Logo, accent colour, watermark on PDF and WordEvery document looks like it came from the same company, whoever made it.
- A spec-sheet builder per productEach product line gets its own sections and fields, so one tool quotes all of them.
- Numbering that skips used numbersNo two quotes ever share a reference, and you can still set one by hand.
- Signatories, bank details, milestones, clauses, email templateThe standard parts of a quote are set once, by the person who owns them.
Who it is for
Who is quotation software like this built for?
Any business that quotes to a specification. If your quote has a spec table, a price page and terms, and it currently starts life as a copy of the last one, the same five sections fit. We change the fields, not the shape.
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Lift and elevator companies
Capacity, speed, stops, drive, doors and cabin finish, plus the maintenance line. Where the portal started. See websites for elevator companies.
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HVAC and mechanical contractors
Units, capacities, ductwork scope and service terms, in one document the site manager can forward. More for trades and home services.
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Fabrication, engineering and manufacturers
Materials, dimensions, finishes and quantities as a clean spec table — quotation software for manufacturers who are judged on the paperwork before the part.
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Signage and solar installers
Sizes, panels, mounting and site notes in the spec; stage payments in the terms; the same branded PDF every time.
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Industrial equipment suppliers
Model, rating and options per line, with delivery and warranty terms that no longer depend on who typed the quote.
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Professional services proposals
Scope in place of the spec, fees in place of the price lines, engagement terms and sign-off. See professional services.
The Word file from the last job
Opened, overwritten, and sent with the previous building’s floor count still on page two.
Each quote is built from sections. Nothing from the last client is in the new one.
The Excel price sheet
Totals worked out in one file and typed into another, where a slipped digit is nobody’s job to catch.
Price lines and the total sit on the same page the client reads.
Specs and photos in WhatsApp and email
The details are spread across chats, so the person writing the quote chases them first.
The specification section is the one place the details go.
A generic off-the-shelf quoting tool
Built for a one-line price, so a technical quote is squeezed into a shape that was not made for it.
Your sections, your fields, your letterhead — fitted to how your trade quotes.
What it replaces
What does a quotation management system replace?
An engineering quotation is rarely rebuilt from nothing; it is rebuilt from the last one. That is slow on the day it matters, and it drifts out of date the moment a spec, a clause or a bank detail changes, because the change has to be remembered in every file it lives in.
A quotation management system keeps each of those things in one place and builds every quote from them, so the quote stops carrying mistakes from the job before.
What you own
What do you own when the portal is built?
All of it. This is not a subscription to someone else’s quoting app.
- The code, handed over and yours to keep
- Every quote, draft and client record it holds
- The logins and hosting, in your name
- Your letterhead, terms and bank details, held in one place you control
If we stop working together, the portal stays where it is and keeps doing its job.
Cost and time
How much does quotation software cost, and how long does it take?
Priced by the job, like all our automation work. We look at how you quote on a short call — how many sections, which fields, who will use it — then put one fixed number and a timeline in writing before any work starts. No hourly meter, and no monthly seat fee to us.
1 fixed pricein writing, before work starts
The real build
Where did this quotation software come from?
We built it for SEE, Shiv Engineering & Elevators, a lift company with 19 years in the trade. An elevator quotation is not one price, it is a document — a cover, a technical specification, a price and bank page, the terms, and a signature — and it was being rebuilt by hand in Word for every enquiry.
The fix was to assemble the quote from sections instead of retyping it, hold the letterhead and the terms in one place, and render the finished branded document beside the form. What we learned: a quote is a document with a deadline, so the tool should look like the document and not like a form. Sectioning it is what makes it reusable across trades.
One tool, many product lines
Passenger, goods and hospital lifts, machine-room-less and geared, hydraulic — each with its own spec sheet, plus a repair catalogue of around 650 parts and charges.
- 5sections, one document
- 1live preview, always on
- 0specs retyped by hand
Questions
What do buyers ask about quotation software?
- What is a quotation portal?
- A quotation portal is a private web tool your team logs into to build quotes. Each quote is assembled from five sections — cover, technical specification, price and bank, terms and sign-off — and the finished, branded PDF renders beside the form while you fill it in.
- How is this different from a quote template in Word or Excel?
- A template is copied and overwritten for every job, so old specs and old bank details travel with it. The portal holds the letterhead, terms and bank details once and builds each quote from sections, so nothing is overwritten and nothing from the last job slips through.
- Can it produce a branded quotation PDF and a Word file?
- Yes. Every quote downloads as a PDF and as a Word document, both from your approved template with your logo and watermark. The live preview is drawn the same way as the PDF, so what staff see while editing is what the client receives.
- Can I send a quote by email or WhatsApp?
- Yes. One click opens a Gmail message with the quote details filled in and the PDF attached, and the time the email is opened is logged as a signal to follow up. A quote can also be shared on WhatsApp.
- Is this quotation software off the shelf or built for us?
- Neither, quite. It was built once, for a lift company, and is fitted to each new trade: your sections, your specification fields, your terms and your letterhead. You are not renting a general tool and bending your quotes to fit it.
- Can it keep drafts and old quotes?
- Yes. Quotes save as drafts, finished quotes stay on file and searchable, any past quote can be duplicated as a new draft, and a quote, client or item deleted by mistake can be restored.
- How much does a quotation portal cost?
- It is priced by the job. We look at how you quote on a short call — how many sections, which fields, who uses it — and then put one fixed price and the timeline in writing before any work starts.
- Is the portal private?
- Yes. It is for your staff only, behind a password, with a lockout after repeated wrong attempts and a forced change of the default password, and it is kept out of search engines.
- Who owns the code and the quotes?
- You do. The code, the quotes and client records it holds, and the logins are in your name, so the portal stays yours whether or not we keep working together.
- Do you work with businesses in Canada and India?
- Yes. DevShutter works with businesses in Canada and India. Wherever you are, the scope, the price and the timeline are agreed in writing before any work starts.
Next step
Want your quotes to leave the office looking like the work?
Send us one quote you have already sent, with the client’s details blanked out. We will show you where its five sections are, what would be held once, and put a fixed price in writing.