Manual quoting might seem familiar and convenient. But this process causes downstream inefficiencies that compromise growth and profitability. Automating quoting is a win for MSPs.
In this article, you will learn:
- Standardizing pricing
- Speeding up the quote-to-cash cycle
- Reducing reliance on specific team members
- Minimizing mistakes with automation and integrations
Key features to look for include PSA/CRM integrations, unlimited users, templates, quote tracking, and optional items.
Quoter is one example built for MSPs, offering real-time pricing, full team access, and automation to simplify and scale quoting.
Bottom line: Quoting tools help MSPs save time, reduce errors, and grow more efficiently.
For many MSPs, quoting is one of the least optimized parts of the sales process. It’s often handled with a mix of spreadsheets, PDFs, and emails — and it’s easy to overlook the cost of sticking with the status quo.
Quoting may feel like an administrative task, but it plays a big role in your client’s first impression of your business, and it can have ripple effects across service delivery, billing, and revenue forecasting.
In this article, we’ll unpack the problems with traditional quoting, what to look for in purpose-built quotation software for MSPs, and how automation can quietly improve both your efficiency and your client experience.
The Problem with Manual Quoting
Most MSPs have run into at least a few of these issues:
- Only one or two people know how to build quotes – the process and/or the tools enabling it requires extensive training
- Inconsistent pricing or branding across proposals – margin can slip after revisions or discounts are applied, and the look-and-feel may not be how you’d like to present your MSP to prospects.
- Delays caused by approvals or back-and-forth edits –line item-level changes, negotiating discounts, client point-of-contact escalating purchases up the chain of command… these all lengthen the sales cycle and kill progress on deals.
- Quoting errors due to outdated spreadsheets or copy-paste mistakes – if it’s never happened, it’s just never happened yet.
- Slow follow-up or lack of visibility into which quotes are still open – many prospects or clients need a push to close, and it’s easy to lose track of opportunities that haven’t closed yet if you haven’t automated status tracking and follow-up.
It’s not just about losing time—it’s about risking accuracy, professionalism, and the ability to scale quoting beyond a handful of team members.
Manual quoting works—until it doesn’t. As MSPs grow and take on more complex services, the cracks in the process start to show.
Why Quoting Tools Matter More Than You Think
The quoting process sits at the intersection of sales, finance, operations, and client communication. A good tool helps those parts work together.
Here’s why investing in quoting software is worth considering:
1. It Standardizes Pricing Across the Team
Quoting software helps ensure that the same products or services are priced the same way, no matter who builds the quote. This avoids inconsistent margins or confusing discrepancies between reps.
2. It Speeds Up the Quote-to-Cash Cycle
When quotes are easier to build and send—and when approvals and follow-ups are automated—you reduce lag time and shorten your overall sales cycle. This can have a direct impact on close rates and monthly revenue.
3. It Reduces Dependence on Key Individuals
If only one or two people know how to quote, they become a bottleneck and an unnecessary risk for your business. With the right software, you can spread that responsibility across your team without sacrificing accuracy.
4. It Helps Avoid Mistakes
Whether it’s a pricing error, missing SKU, or outdated product availability, quoting mistakes happen. Automation helps reduce manual re-entry, miscommunications, and the “version control” issues that often lead to confusion, especially on more complex quotes with bundles, options, or discounts.
What to Look for in Quoting Software for MSPs
Not all quoting tools are built with service providers in mind. Here are some key things MSPs should prioritize:
- Integrations with PSA, CRM, and Distributors
Look for quoting tools that sync with your PSA (e.g., Autotask, ConnectWise, or HaloPSA), your CRM, and your preferred vendors and distributors. This ensures your quotes include real-time pricing and accurate contact data—without double-entries or painful revisions from quoting out-of-stock products or error corrections.
If quoting is limited to just a few seats, it becomes a choke point. Software that includes unlimited users (like Quoter) enables more staff to quote as needed, without worrying about extra licensing costs.
Building quotes from scratch every time slows things down. Tools that allow for templates and pre-built bundles help you deliver quotes faster and with minimal mistakes.
- Optional Items and Customization
Sometimes clients want a few choices. Best quoting tools let you include optional items—so you can offer flexibility without the back-and-forth.
- Audit Trails and Quote Tracking
Being able to see who built what, when, and what’s been sent or opened helps improve sales tracking and accountability. E-signatures and payment integrations let clients accept, sign, and pay in a few clicks, reducing friction for clients and speeding the quote-to-cash process for your MSP.
Quoter: An Example of a Tool Designed for MSP Workflows
Quoter is one platform that ticks many of the boxes MSPs care about. It was designed specifically for IT service providers, with features that address common friction points like:
- Real-time supplier pricing and availability
- Unlimited free users to get your whole team quoting
- Professional, branded templates that speed creating accurate quotes
- Optional approvals and automated follow-ups and status tracking
- Support for quoting hardware, software, and services, as one-offs, bundled, or recurring
- Integrations with Autotask, ConnectWise, and HaloPSA, plus more than a dozen CRMs, payment gateways, and billing platforms.
- Flexibility and workflows enabled by a public API and webhooks
For teams used to spreadsheets or legacy tools, switching to Quoter usually results in a noticeable decrease in quoting time and a more consistent client-facing experience.
According to Yaser Shohani of TelcoCentric, implementing Quoter helped his team reduce the number of steps in their quote-to-cash cycle. That kind of efficiency doesn’t just save time—it makes quoting repeatable and scalable.
Final Thoughts
Quoting may not seem like the most strategic part of your MSP’s operations—but it touches almost everything. Sales velocity, client experience, service consistency, billing accuracy… all of it starts with a quote.
Whether you use Quoter or another quoting tool, the goal is the same:
To move away from bottlenecks, reduce manual effort, and give your team a more sustainable quoting process.
If quoting is still a manual chore in your business, it might be worth asking:
What’s the cost of keeping it that way?
