Configurator and quotes
Royal Plast
A quoting tool for joinery that works out the price from dimensions and options, draws the window, and produces a PDF ready for the customer.
Problem
A made-to-measure window has no price until everything is chosen: dimensions, opening type, glass, roller shutter, drip cap, insect screen. Every extra is charged per square metre, so the same item is recalculated from scratch for every enquiry. On top of that, a finished quote is described to the customer in words — "single-leaf, left wing vertical, right both ways" — which the joiner understands and the customer does not. And with made-to-measure joinery a misunderstanding is not a return but scrap, because the window does not go back on a shelf.
Solution
A quote is assembled in three steps and prices itself. It starts from a catalogue item, then adds per-square-metre surcharges for glass and fittings. Beside every line the window is drawn from the entered dimensions, with measurements, so the customer sees what they are ordering instead of reading it. At the end comes a PDF carrying the company and customer details, which can be downloaded at any time.
What was built
- Window and door configurator with the price calculated as you go
- Automatic drawing of each line from its dimensions, with measurements
- Catalogue of 132 items — 117 windows and 15 doors
- Per-square-metre surcharges for glass type and fittings
- Opening direction chosen for the left and right leaf
- PDF quote generated with company and customer details
- Quotes downloadable at any point afterwards
- Customer records and quote history
- VAT calculation with net and gross totals shown
- A note field on the quote, for anything agreed outside the price list
A window has no price until the sentence is finished. A hundred by a hundred in white is one figure; the same one with low-emissivity glass and a roller shutter is another, and the difference is not added but calculated per square metre.
Done by hand, two things leak constantly. The first is time — every enquiry is a fresh calculation. The second is misunderstanding, because the finished line is described to the customer in words the joiner understands and the customer does not.
The drawing solves the second. It is generated from the very dimensions already entered, with measurements, and sits on the quote beside the price. The customer does not have to picture what they ordered.
That is not decoration. With made-to-measure joinery a misread line does not go back into stock — it has already been cut.
Result
A quote that used to need manual per-square-metre arithmetic now comes out finished, with a price and a drawing. The customer sees the window before ordering it, so a misunderstanding is caught on paper instead of in the workshop. Every quote stays in the system and can be downloaded again without being rebuilt.
From the application
