ESTIMATE™

Enhanced Sales Orders Quoting System

ESTIMATE™ from PMC Software is a quoting system designed to provide an accurate expectation of stock glass required to fulfill a customer quote or bid.  ESTIMATE™ is a simple to use yet highly efficient glass estimating system.  ESTIMATE™ provides the means to estimate the amount of glass required for a particular job quote or bid by glass type (color and thickness). 

With its user friendly interface, clear, easy to understand prompts provide instructions for all entries.  And data verification occurs immediately, making it impossible for improper data to enter the system.

Since ESTIMATE™ is a stand-alone system, the optimizations used to generate quotes are independent of your regular glass optimizations.  Testing has shown that even better yields are received once the order is actually processed for fabrication, since quotes often contain only a single order and orders for fabrication are processed in a batch, which improves the size mix and the yield.

When your Sales or Customer Service department needs to determine the amount and cost of glass for a particular quote or bid, PMC's ESTIMATE™ software can help.  ESTIMATE™ offers two options for generating quotes - an interface that allows transfer of order detail from your business system or manual entry of order information into the ESTIMATE™ system.  ESTIMATE™ organizes your glass estimating requirements into related groups called "cutlists". 

Cutlists are comprised of the quantities and sizes of glass you need to estimate and available inventory sizes and quantities of glass to be used in estimating the job, by color and thickness of glass. 

Before optimization begins, the operator can review the inventory sizes available for each glass type and make any changes that may be necessary, including the factoring of scrap glass in the optimization.  When optimization takes place, ESTIMATE™ either generates a printed report of the estimation or transfers the information back to the business system.  The following information is generated for each different inventory type used:

• Material composition (glass color and thickness)
• Stock size of the inventory
• Quantity of stock sheets used
• Square footage used and cost

ESTIMATET is parameter driven and enables customization of the system to fit your specific estimating requirements.  Parameters can include consideration of graining limitations and also provide an easy way to reduce inventory required for a particular job by allowing the user to evaluate different glass inventory sizes to achieve maximum utilization of glass inventory.

Two groups of basic rules allow you to control ESTIMATE™'s operation. 

• Layout Parameters provide control over the trim and complexity of the optimization portion of the estimating system. 
• Output Parameters control the printing of the optimized results.  They address scrap designations, dimensional information and report format.