Quoting software for manufacturers and job shops.

In a lot of shops, quoting is a spreadsheet, a pile of past jobs, and the judgment of one estimator who has done it for years. Quotes take days, two people quoting the same part get two different numbers, and when the estimator is out, quoting stops. Norsoft builds quoting software that holds your pricing rules, so the answer is fast and the same every time, from Mankato, Minnesota.

Buy first, if it fits

There are good quoting and estimating products for manufacturers and machine shops, and if your work prices out in a fairly standard way, start there. Where shops outgrow them is the pricing logic that is specific to them. Material that is bought and charged a particular way. Setup costs that depend on what ran before. Customer tiers and contract pricing. Minimums, breaks, and the handful of rules your estimator applies without thinking about them.

When the product has no place for those rules, the estimator keeps the real math in a spreadsheet next to it, and you are back where you started with a subscription on top.

Why quoting belongs in software, not in a chat window

Quoting has rules: material plus labor plus setup plus margin, adjusted for what you know about the customer. Rules belong in software, where the same inputs produce the same answer and you can point at why. We tested this publicly by asking three AI tools to quote the same project twice each, and got six prices from $42,000 to $128,000. That experiment is here. A quote tool that gives a different answer on Tuesday than on Monday is a liability.

What we build

A quoting tool that holds your actual pricing logic: your materials and how you buy them, your machines and their rates, your setup rules, your customer tiers, your minimums. Anyone you trust can produce a quote in minutes, it comes out the same no matter who builds it, and you can see exactly how every number was reached. It can read from your ERP for costs and push accepted quotes back as orders, so nothing gets retyped.

The estimator's judgment does not go away. It gets written down, which is the part that protects the business.

A real example

A five-tier pricing engine for a veterinary supply distributor. A distributor rather than a manufacturer, but the same problem: complex pricing rules that nobody else could untangle, producing slow and inconsistent quotes. We took over the broken engine and rebuilt it, and it has given instant, accurate quotes since. Read the case study.

How we start

We sit with your estimator and quote a handful of real jobs together, out loud. Every "well, for this customer we" is a rule, and writing those rules down is valuable on its own, whether you build anything or not.

This is probably you if

• Quotes take days and customers are waiting on you
• Two people can quote the same part and get different numbers
• One estimator holds the pricing logic and quoting stops when they are out
• You bought quoting software and the real math still lives in a spreadsheet

More on the other problems we solve for plants is on our manufacturing page.