Six months ago, every time I needed to quote a client, I'd open a blank Google Doc and start from scratch. Line by line, service by service, calculating totals on my phone's calculator.
I'd spend 30 minutes creating what should take five. Worse, I'd sometimes get distracted and completely forget to send them.
One potential client waited three days for their quote. By the time I remembered to hit send, they'd already signed with someone else. Another prospect received a quote with the wrong company name because I'd copied it from a previous template.
As a content strategist for B2B SaaS companies, I knew better. I was the person writing about automation while drowning in manual work.
Quote automation solves exactly these problems by removing human error and speeding up your entire sales cycle. In this guide, I’ll break down what that is exactly, why you need it, and how you can automate your quotation process with Qwilr.
What is quote automation?
Quote automation involves using software to generate, manage, and deliver sales quotes quickly and accurately. As a core function of modern CPQ systems, it connects your CRM systems, pricing rules, and product catalog to produce compliant, client-ready quotes in minutes.
Reps can select products, apply approved discounts, and instantly generate quotes with built-in templates and logic. Quotation automation ultimately reduces time-to-quote, improving pricing accuracy and maintaining brand consistency without the need for back-and-forth approvals.
6 ways automation improves your sales quotation process
Sales teams are losing deals to competitors and to their own process.
Between manual calculations, approval bottlenecks, and formatting inconsistencies, even great quotes go out late, go out wrong, or don’t go out at all.
McKinsey research confirms what most sales leaders already suspect: quote configuration, pricing, and approvals—collectively known as CPQ—have one of the highest automation potential across the sales cycle. In fact, 43% of these tasks are highly automatable with today’s technology.
Automated quote management removes that friction. It standardizes formatting. Applies the right pricing rules instantly. Routes approvals automatically. And transforms your sales ops function from a cost center into a competitive edge.
Here are six ways quote automation helps.
Improved accuracy and reduced errors
Automated sales systems eliminate the human mistakes that derail deals or damage your reputation.
No more sending sales quotes with last quarter's pricing, miscalculated totals, or the wrong company name in the header. The system pulls current product information and applies pricing rules consistently across every accurate quote.
Manual errors create confusion during negotiations, delay deal stages, and sometimes cost you money when you honor incorrect pricing to save face.
Quote automation catches these mistakes before they reach your prospects. Every quote reflects accurate inventory, current pricing tiers, and proper discount calculations. Your team looks competent and trustworthy from the first interaction.
This reliability builds confidence with buyers who are evaluating multiple vendors.
Faster turnaround times for every deal
What used to require assembling pricing spreadsheets, checking discount eligibility, and formatting documents now happens instantly. Quote automation eliminates hours of manual work by automatically pulling product data, applying pricing rules, and formatting professional documents in seconds.
McKinsey found that early users of sales automation improve efficiency by 10 to 15% and can boost sales by up to 10%.
How come? Buyers are comparing you to competitors who might respond faster. When prospects request pricing, same-day quote delivery becomes the standard instead of the exception.
For example, a SaaS company selling project management software can instantly generate accurate quotes for enterprise sales packages with custom user tiers, add-on modules, and multi-year discount structures. What previously required coordinating between sales operations, finance, and product teams now happens in one system.
This speed advantage compounds throughout your sales pipeline. Faster quotes mean faster negotiations, faster approvals, and faster closes. Deals that used to drag out over weeks because of administrative delays now maintain momentum from first contact to signed contract.
Reduces sales admin workload
Quote automation eliminates hours of data entry, calculating, and formatting that drain your sales team's energy.
Instead of building proposals from scratch, reps spend 30 seconds selecting products and letting the system handle the math. No more hunting through old quotes for pricing templates or double-checking calculations on spreadsheets - this eliminates duplicate data entry and repetitive tasks.
The system automatically pulls customer data from your CRM, applies the correct pricing tiers, and formats everything consistently. Reps can focus on high value activities like relationship building and deal strategy instead of manual labor.
Aligns sales and finance teams
Quote automation eliminates the constant back-and-forth between sales and finance teams over pricing approvals.
Finance sets pricing rules, discount thresholds, and approval workflows once in the system. Sales reps know exactly what they can offer without making phone calls or sending Slack messages for every deal. When quotes exceed preset limits, they automatically route to the right approvers to approve quotes.
This alignment prevents awkward situations where reps promise pricing they can't deliver. Finance maintains control over margins while sales move faster and can maintain compliance with company policies. Both teams work from the same data source, eliminating discrepancies between what's quoted and what's actually profitable.
The result is fewer deal delays, better margin protection, and happier teams who aren't constantly chasing each other down.
Creates scalable processes that support growth
Manual quoting becomes impossible as your business grows and your product catalog expands.
With quote automation, your sales team can handle way more quote requests without hiring additional staff. The sales quote process scales seamlessly whether you're sending 50 quotes per month or 500. Add new products to the system once and they appear automatically in future quote generation.
Regional pricing, multi-currency support, and complex discount structures all scale without additional overhead. Your newest sales rep can generate quotes as accurately as your most experienced team member because the system handles the complexity while reducing manual effort and improving the overall quote-to-cash process.
As deal sizes increase and buying committees grow larger, automated approval workflows ensure nothing falls through the cracks while maintaining proper oversight.
Creates a more interactive buyer experience
Automated quote systems let prospects configure products themselves, see real-time pricing changes, and get instant quotes without waiting for a sales rep. They can adjust quantities, compare options, and explore different configurations at their own pace.
This self-service approach removes friction from the buying process and enhances the customer experience. Instead of playing phone tag to get pricing information, buyers can explore your offerings when it's convenient for them. They feel more in control of the process.
Interactive quotes also keep prospects engaged longer, giving them time to visualize solutions and build confidence in their purchasing decisions.
How does sales quote automation work with Qwilr?
As a quoting software, Qwilr takes quote creation beyond basic templates by creating interactive web-based documents that act as mini-websites for your proposals. Here are four ways Qwilr automates your quoting process while improving the buyer experience.
Syncs real-time customer and product data
Quote generation pulls live data from your CRM instead of forcing reps to manually enter customer details, product configurations, and pricing tiers for each quote, eliminating data entry entirely.
With Qwilr's CRM integration, customer data, deal amounts, and product selections automatically populate quote templates to streamline business processes. Reps select the deal from their pipeline, and the system fills in contact details, company information, and previously discussed products.
Qwilr integrates with HubSpot, Salesforce, and Pipedrive to sync this data automatically. When a rep opens a quote template, Qwilr pulls fields like customer name, deal size, and product selections directly from the CRM record.
Qwilr can also suggest upsells based on customer profile data through data collection. Say the CRM shows there's an enterprise client, it might recommend premium support packages or additional user licenses.
Calculate pricing with built-in logic
Automated pricing engines handle discount calculations, volume pricing, and recurring billing without spreadsheets or manual math.
Qwilr's pricing structures apply discounts at multiple levels - line items, product sections, or entire quotes. Reps set the discount percentage, and Qwilr calculates new totals automatically.
If you often use the same discounts, save them to your library to apply them anywhere in a quote.
For SaaS companies, the system handles monthly and annual pricing automatically. If a customer selects annual billing, it applies the discount and shows both monthly equivalent and total annual cost.
Generate polished, brand-approved documents
Template automation ensures consistent formatting, approved messaging, and brand compliance across all sales quotes without manual formatting work.
Qwilr templates include locked sections for legal terms, payment conditions, and company boilerplate that reps cannot accidentally modify. Brand elements like logos, color schemes, and font choices apply automatically.
Qwilr also creates mobile-responsive web pages instead of static PDFs, making quotes easier to view and share across devices. Prospects can forward the link to stakeholders or review pricing on their phones during meetings.
Templates also include pre-written product descriptions, case studies, and value propositions that reps can customize for specific sales deals while maintaining message consistency.
Track engagement and route for approvals
Quote automation provides real-time analytics on prospect engagement and automates internal approval process workflows.
Qwilr tracks when prospects open quotes, how long they spend reviewing each section, and whether they share the quote internally.
Sales reps get notifications when prospects re-engage with pricing, signaling buying intent.
The engagement data shows which sections prospects focus on most, helping reps tailor follow-up conversations. If a prospect spends significant time on the pricing section but doesn't respond, reps know to address potential cost concerns in their next outreach.
Collect payments instantly with integrated checkout
Sales quote automation becomes truly complete when prospects can pay immediately after accepting your proposal. Instead of sending separate invoices or switching to payment platforms, customers complete the entire transaction within your quote.
This eliminates the gap between "yes" and actual payment, reducing the risk of deals falling through during payment processing. Cash flow improves because there's no delay between accepting payments and collecting them.
QwilrPay handles this seamlessly by letting customers pay directly on your Qwilr pages using credit cards or bank transfers like ACH.
You get a centralized payments dashboard to track all quotes - both paid and pending - monitor payment status, and manage balances in one place.
Admin controls let you enable payments across your entire account and set requirements like full payment on acceptance or partial payments. The checkout experience builds trust with professional branding at the crucial payment moment.
Scale your sales process with Qwilr
Start with one template connected to your CRM. Add interactive pricing so buyers can build their own quotes. Let customers pay right from the quote to avoid delays. Step by step, your whole quoting process starts running on its own.
The change starts small but builds quickly. Week one, your quotes look polished and fill in customer info automatically. By month one, buyers start building and paying for their own packages. By the end of the quarter, your team sends out twice as many quotes.
Ready to automate your quote process? Try Qwilr free for 14 days and see the difference in your first week.
About the author
Kiran Shahid|Content Marketing Strategist
Kiran is a content marketing strategist with over nine years of experience creating research-driven content for B2B SaaS companies like HubSpot, Sprout Social, and Zapier. Her expertise in SEO, in-depth research, and data analysis allow her to create thought leadership for topics like AI, sales, productivity, content marketing, and ecommerce. When not writing, you can find her trying new foods and booking her next travel adventure."
