The problem
The group sells through several companies, each with its own products, customers and sales team. Quotes were put together in a spreadsheet quoting tool, and once a customer said yes, a sales controller typed the whole quote into the accounting system again before it could be ordered.
Every quote was handled twice. Versions drifted apart, prices and margins were easy to get wrong, and export quotes priced in dollars or euros meant working out exchange rates by hand.
The system
Flairr built one quoting platform for every company in the group, each with its own customers, products, templates and team. Customers and products sync from the accounting system, so reps quote from the same data the business runs on, and supplier price lists and product bundles import straight from a spreadsheet or PDF.
Prices are worked out in rand, dollars or euros from the landed cost, the target margin and the day's exchange rate with forward cover. Every quote is versioned and goes out as a PDF on the company's own template, and marking it sent opens an Outlook draft with the PDF attached. When the customer accepts, the quote becomes a sales order in the accounting system in one step. Larger deals can go out as a full proposal, versioned the same way.
Guardrails
A quote that falls below its margin floor can't go out until a manager approves it. Prices that haven't been updated in a while are flagged before they reach a customer. Each company sees only its own customers, products and quotes, and every finalised version is kept as the PDF the customer received.