B2B Quote Builder: How We Simplify Quoting for UK Businesses

A B2B quote builder helps sales teams create, brand, send and track quotations from one system. It can pull products from Magento or a standalone product list, reducing the need to copy data between emails, spreadsheets, and CSV files.

Consider a catering company handling an enquiry for a function of 150 people. A wholesaler may need to quote a bulk order, while a manufacturer may need to combine products and services into a single quotation. Distributors, meanwhile, may send similar quotations to the same customers every month.

In many cases, the products already exist in the ecommerce catalogue, and the customer details are already stored in the company's records. Yet sales teams may still have to transfer information manually between systems to prepare a quotation.

That's why we built a Quotation Builder for Owen Brothers Catering. This quotation management system is designed around a real-world sales workflow. It helps teams turn customer enquiries into professional quotations without having to recreate the same information from scratch each time.

Why Is B2B Quotation Management a Problem?

The ecommerce funnel doesn't always apply to a B2B sale. The customer may not be ready to click the Buy Now button. They usually need a tailored quote covering quantities, products, services and pricing.

Most quotes go through a few revisions before the customer approves them. A simple sales process can be unnecessarily manual when each change requires digging through emails, spreadsheets and documents. Making a quotation is not difficult. It's the repetition of collecting, copying and entering the same information.

A product is taken from one system. Information on customers is retrieved from an email message. The prices are modified in a spreadsheet. The quotation is created in a document. The final version is sent by email to the customer. Then the customer requests a change. The team starts copying information again. This is the email-and-spreadsheet loop.

Quotation Builder: One Workflow From Enquiry to Quote

Quotation Builder handles the whole quote, from enquiry to sent PDF, in one place.

For businesses already selling on Magento, it uses API system integrations to pull products straight from your Magento catalogue. This way, the sales team will not have to manually enter the product information again, just because the customer has asked them to offer a quotation rather than an online order.

The workflow becomes:

Magento product catalogue → Quotation Builder → Customer

The quotation system can be used separately from Magento. It's ideal for companies that require more specialised quotation software but don't want to operate their ecommerce business on the Magento platform.

This makes it suitable for wholesalers, manufacturers, distributors, caterers, event companies, and B2B service providers.

How the B2B Quote Builder Works

Start With the Client

The quotation process starts with the customer.

The system can be expanded with a new client, and selected clients can be chosen for preparing another quotation. This is especially helpful for repeat business as customer details won't need to be re-entered with each new enquiry.

Select Products or Services

The next step is choosing the respective products or services that need to be quoted.

If the business is connected to Magento, then the relevant products can be retrieved from the existing Magento catalogue. With standalone users, products and services can be managed directly in the quotation system.

This helps to provide one place to build the quote, instead of switching between systems.

Build and Customise the Quotation

After making the selection of the necessary products/services, the quotation can be prepared around the actual needs of the customer.

Adjustments to quantity and pricing can be made to meet the enquiry. For B2B sales, this is crucial as their customers may be looking for something a little more flexible than a typical ecommerce basket.

The goal isn't to eliminate customisation. It's intended to make customisation more straightforward without having to completely recreate the quotation from the ground up.

Apply Business Branding

A quotation is also a client-oriented document; therefore, presentation is essential.

With RVS Quotation Builder, businesses can add their name, logo and brand colours to every quotation.

This essentially translates to a document that looks like the business, and not a document that is generated internally such as a spreadsheet or a generic sales document. 

Send the Quote by Email

If the quotation is ready, it can be emailed directly from the system using your own SMTP settings.

This will ensure that the quotation process remains linked to the sending process. No need for the team to manually download the document, open a separate email client and recreate the communication process each time a quotation is ready.

Save and Reuse Quotations

For businesses that receive similar enquiries regularly, quotation templates can come in very handy.

If a catering company often comes up with similar quotes for events, the team may save a quotation structure and plug in the information that is unique to the new client.

This helps to minimise repetitive work, whilst at the same time leaving the quotation adaptable.

Manage Quotations From One Dashboard

The dashboard allows you to view and control the activity of all your quotes and your client data in one location.

The business has a dedicated environment for its quotation workflow, rather than having to deal with individual inboxes, spreadsheets and scattered files.

This makes it more convenient to consider quotes as a piece of the sales rather than a document that just happens to be produced when selling.

Why Standalone Quotation Software Matters

Not every B2B business uses Magento, and not every business sells through a traditional ecommerce store.

A manufacturer may have a website but handle most sales through enquiries. A catering company may offer packages rather than individual ecommerce products, while an events company may need to combine products and services differently for every booking.

If you're planning a new B2B store, quotation functionality can be built in from day one as part of your ecommerce website development. 

But you don't need a Magento website to manage quotations professionally. A standalone quotation builder gives businesses a structured process for creating, sending and tracking quotes, even when their products, services and sales workflows don't fit a traditional ecommerce model.

Which Three Cycles Does the Quote Builder Remove? 

• Re-entering customer details: existing clients are selected, not retyped.
• The second one is re-creating product information. This allows businesses connected with Magento to obtain products from their current catalogue, instead of having to keep a separate product list for quotations.
• The third is the reconstruction of similar quotations. Templates can be used for quotations that are frequently used, rather than having to type them out again.

None of this replaces the sales team. It removes the repetitive admin around them.

Ready to Stop Rebuilding Every Quote?

Still building quotes from emails and spreadsheets? Book a free quote-workflow review with Ecommerce Excellence.

The Bigger Lesson: Not All Sales Happen at Checkout

B2B quotation software is best seen as a sales tool, not an admin tool.

It's the link between an enquiry and an order.

A customer starts a conversation. There, the business converts the conversation to requirements. Those requirements become a quotation. The quotation can then be a sale.

RVS Quotation Builder was designed to simplify and standardise that middle stage.

The first step is easy to take: Identify the last 10 quotations your team sent via email threads, CSV files, and manually created documents, and then map them.

This is where the true opportunity for automation typically starts.