What is the difference between a simple and a calculated quotation?

Every quotation starts from a template, and when that template was created, a choice was made between a simple and a calculated quotation. That is an important choice: it determines how you calculate, whether recalculation is possible and how far you can analyse afterwards.

You make the choice with the Calculated checkbox in the Blank quotation window, when you create a new quotation template. Every quotation you then draw up from that template takes over the choice.

How do I see the difference?

What can a simple quotation do?

As the name says: draw up a quotation quickly and simply. Only the selling price is kept — no cost price, no margin.

As a result, no recalculation is possible, and you cannot work with posts and parameters, cannot add indirect costs, cannot adjust the margin and cannot carry out an in-depth analysis afterwards.

All the other options of the quotation do keep working as usual: importing a measurement, sending an email and having it signed, introduction and end, replacement codes, creating a revision, keeping files, placing a supply order …

What can a calculated quotation do?

In a calculated quotation you do not estimate the price of a quotation line, you build it up. Behind every line sits a substructure with what the work really costs you, per cost type: Material, Labor (hours × hourly cost), Equipment, Subcontractor and Other (for example transport or the rental of a container). On top of that come your margin, your indirect costs (a percentage to recover costs that do not arise on site, such as your office and administration) and your direct costs (project costs that you cannot assign to a single line, such as the site set-up, and that are spread across the quotation lines). That way you know exactly how every selling price is built up, and therefore also where you can come down in order to win a job, and where you cannot.

That gives you a grip on your figures, both while drawing up the quotation and during the recalculation and the financial analysis afterwards. In it you can:

• work with posts — the substructure of your quotation lines. You build up your knowledge once and reuse it in every quotation, so that every estimator calculates with the same substructure;
• use parameters and formulas in those posts. That is also how you capture experience from your recalculation: a question "easy access to the floor?" that automatically adds extra hours when the answer is "no". More about this in smart calculation with parameters;
• set your margin, add a commission and charge on direct or indirect costs;
• hide certain costs in the substructure of a post from your customer;
• request an analysis of the entire quotation and per post. The Overview tab shows the breakdown per Cost type and, if you work with activities, per Activity. That way you see, before you send the quotation, where you earn and where you are cutting it fine;
• create supply orders directly from the materials in the substructure of your posts, with the Make supply order action button;
• use your calculation as a budget: if the quotation is active on a project, the recalculation of that project sets the budgeted costs against the realised costs from work orders, incoming invoices and supply orders, among others.

Those are options, not obligations. In a calculated quotation you can perfectly well draw up a quotation with only item lines, and adjust the prices manually the way you would in a simple quotation. You also do not have to calculate every line down to the last bolt straight away: start with your most important posts and refine as you go.

Updated on: 14/10/2026