5 Quoting Mistakes Small Shops Make (and How to Fix Them)

Small shops make the same quoting mistakes over and over. Not because the people running them are careless — they're often excellent machinists and business owners — but because quoting is an afterthought compared to actually running parts. Here are the five that cost the most money.

1. No setup line item

Setup gets rolled into the hourly rate, mentally estimated, and then undercharged. On high-volume runs this doesn't matter much. On short-run custom work, it's often the difference between making money and breaking even. Fix it by adding setup as an explicit line item on every quote, every time.

2. Forgetting deburr and inspection

Parts don't ship the second they come off the machine. There's deburring, cleaning, inspection, and packaging. These take time — sometimes a lot of time on complex parts. If they're not in the quote, you're eating them.

3. Material pass-through with no markup

You took on the risk of purchasing the material, sourcing it correctly, and having it arrive on time. That deserves compensation. A 25-35% markup on raw material is standard and customers expect it.

4. Quotes without expiration dates

A quote with no expiration date is a liability. Material costs go up. Your schedule fills. A customer who comes back eight months later waving a quote you wrote when you were slow and steel was cheap is a problem you created. Put an expiration date on everything.

5. Lump sum pricing

A single number with no breakdown is easy to compare and easy to reject. A line-item quote that shows material, setup, operations, and finishing is harder to dismiss because it demonstrates the work behind the price. It also signals that you're a shop that knows what it's doing.

Fixing all five of these doesn't require a new system. It requires a quoting process that makes each of them the default rather than something you have to remember to do.