Quotes and Custom Fabrication Requests in CraftOps

Custom work is the lifeblood of most maker shops. A customer sends a rough idea, you figure out what it will take to produce, quote a price, and wait for approval. The problem is that quoting is often the most time-consuming part of the process. Between analyzing files, researching material costs, estimating print times, and writing up the proposal, a single quote can consume an hour or more. CraftOps streamlines this entire workflow with an integrated quote builder that pulls data from your existing material profiles, machine rates, and file analysis tools to generate accurate quotes in minutes.

From the moment a customer submits a fabrication request to the moment an approved quote converts into a scheduled production job, CraftOps keeps everything connected. No copy-pasting between spreadsheets and email. No mental math on material costs. Just a structured pipeline that moves requests through review, quoting, approval, and production with full traceability at every step.

Customer Request Submission

Customers can submit fabrication requests through the CraftOps customer portal, a shareable request form on your website, or directly via email forwarding. Each request captures the essential information your team needs to build a quote: project description, desired material, quantity, deadline preference, and any attached design files. The request form is customizable, so you can add fields specific to your shop such as color preference, finish type, or tolerance requirements.

Submitted requests land in a dedicated queue on your CraftOps dashboard, organized by date received and flagged with priority indicators if the customer marked the job as urgent. Each request shows a summary card with the customer name, project description, attached file count, and requested deadline. Your team reviews the queue during morning planning or as requests arrive throughout the day, pulling each one into the quoting phase when they are ready to evaluate it.

For requests that include design files, CraftOps runs the same file preview and analysis pipeline used elsewhere in the platform. By the time your estimator opens the request, the model has already been rendered, dimensions measured, and potential issues flagged. This pre-processing eliminates the separate step of downloading files, opening them in a slicer, and manually checking geometry before you can even begin building the quote.

The Quote Builder and Cost Breakdowns

The CraftOps quote builder is where estimation meets precision. When you create a quote from a customer request, the builder pre-populates key fields from the request details and file analysis. Material type, estimated weight, print time, and machine assignment are filled in based on your shop's profiles. Your job is to review these defaults, adjust where needed, and add any line items that the automated analysis cannot capture.

The cost breakdown in every quote is fully transparent, both to your team internally and optionally to the customer. Each line item shows its cost basis: material cost per gram multiplied by estimated grams, machine time at your hourly rate, labor hours for post-processing, and any flat fees for setup, design work, or expediting. The customer sees a clear, professional breakdown rather than a single opaque number, which builds trust and reduces price objections.

For multi-part orders, the quote builder lets you add individual components, each with its own material, quantity, and cost calculation. A customer ordering five different brackets in three different materials gets a single quote with five itemized sections and a total at the bottom. Quantity discounts can be applied per item or across the entire quote, and markup percentages adjust independently for each line if certain items have different margin targets.

Tip: Save your most common quote configurations as templates. If you regularly quote phone cases in PLA at standard infill, create a template that pre-fills material, infill, layer height, and your standard markup. Templates cut quoting time for repeat job types down to under two minutes.

Approval Workflow and Converting Quotes to Jobs

Once a quote is built, it enters an approval workflow. If your shop has a review process, the quote can be routed to a manager for internal approval before it reaches the customer. The manager sees the full cost breakdown, margin analysis, and any notes from the estimator, and can approve, adjust, or send back for revision. For shops without an internal review layer, quotes go directly to the customer.

Customers receive quotes through email or the customer portal, complete with an interactive view of the cost breakdown, attached file previews, and a clear approve or decline action. When the customer clicks approve, CraftOps records the approval timestamp and optionally collects a deposit payment through the integrated payment system. Declined quotes are archived with any customer feedback so your team can review patterns in why quotes are rejected, whether it is pricing, lead time, or something else.

The real power emerges when an approved quote converts to a production job. With one click, the quote transforms into a fully configured job that carries forward the design files, material selections, machine assignment, cost targets, and customer information. The job appears in the production scheduler ready for time slot assignment. No re-entry of specifications, no re-uploading of files, no risk of transcription errors between the quote and the production order.

Quote history is preserved even after conversion. If a dispute arises about what was agreed upon, both parties can reference the original quote with its itemized breakdown, the customer's approval timestamp, and the exact files that were quoted. This audit trail protects your shop and provides clarity for the customer.

What's Next

A streamlined quoting process means more quotes sent, faster approvals, and less time lost between a customer inquiry and production start. In our next post, we will explore the CraftOps marketplace, where shops can list designs and templates for customers to browse and order directly, bypassing the custom quote process entirely for catalog items. If your shop spends too long on quotes that never convert, CraftOps gives you the tools to quote faster, present more professionally, and track which types of work deliver the best margins.