Understanding the Price
Every quote screen has a price panel on the right side. It does the math for you and updates the moment you change anything in the form. This page walks through everything that panel shows, so you always know what you’re looking at before you send a quote.
The price panel is live. Change a field — the letter count, the height, a fee toggle — and the numbers on the right refresh instantly. There’s no “calculate” button to press.
The big total at the top
At the very top you’ll see Quote total and a large dollar amount, like the price on quote #1001 “CAFE”. That’s the customer’s price, rounded to a whole dollar. It’s the number the customer pays and the number that prints on the PDF.
Everything below it just explains how that total breaks down.
The line items
Under the total is a short list of lines that add up to it. Each one is a plain part of the job the customer understands.
| Line | What it means to the customer |
|---|---|
| Fabrication — channel letters | Making the lit letters (channel-letter quotes) |
| Supplied letters | Supplying the cut or cast letters (dimensional-letter quotes) |
| Installation | Putting the sign up on the wall |
| Permit | The sign permit fee, shown only when you turned the permit toggle on |
| Engineering (PE stamp) | The engineer’s stamp fee, shown only when you turned engineering on |
| Design | Artwork and layout — added automatically on channel-letter quotes |
Permit and Engineering only appear when you’ve switched them on in the form, so the list changes to match the job you’re quoting.
The margin badge (channel letters)
On a channel-letter quote you’ll see a small colored pill next to the total, like
Margin 74.7%. It’s a quick health check on the price. You don’t need to do any math —
the color tells you everything.
| Color | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| 🟢 Green | Healthy margin (about 45% or more) | Good to send |
| 🟡 Amber | Getting thin (about 30–45%) | Fine, but don’t discount much further |
| 🔴 Red | At or below the floor (under 30%) | Check with your manager before sending |
When the badge is red, a warning line also appears under the total: “Below margin floor — this price approaches material + labor cost.” That’s your signal to stop and confirm the price with your manager before it goes out.
A red badge usually means the price has been pushed down too far — often by a heavy discount or an unusual configuration. Don’t send a red quote without a manager’s OK.
Dimensional-letter quotes don’t show a margin badge. Their markup is set a simpler way, so there’s nothing to read here — quote #1002 “LAW OFFICE” is a dimensional quote and won’t have a pill.
The LED and power chips (channel letters)
Below the line items on a channel-letter quote you’ll see a row of small gray chips, such as:
- 5 LED modules/letter
- 20 modules total
- 20 W
- 1 power supply
These are just confirming the sign is properly engineered — the right number of LEDs and the right power supply for the job. There’s nothing for you to set or change here. They’re handy if a customer asks “is it bright enough?” or “how many transformers?”
The Pricing detail expander (channel letters)
On channel-letter quotes there’s a small Pricing detail section you can click to
expand. It shows two numbers, and both of them are prices, not costs:
- Quoted (per-inch) — the price the quote is actually using.
- Reference — a second price worked out a different way, shown as a sanity check.
If the two are close, the quote is in a normal range. It’s just there for peace of mind; you don’t have to do anything with it.
Choosing the PDF layout
Just below that is the PDF layout toggle with two choices:
- Itemized — the PDF lists each line (Fabrication, Installation, and so on).
- Total only — the PDF shows just the one total price.
Pick whichever you want the customer to see. Switching it doesn’t change the price — only how the PDF reads.
Downloading or previewing the PDF
Enter the customer’s name
The Download PDF button stays grayed out until the quote has a customer name. If you
see “Enter a customer name first”, fill in the name field on the left and the button turns on.
Preview or download
Preview PDFopens the quote on screen so you can check it before sending.Download PDFsaves the finished PDF to your computer.
See The PDF quote for what the finished document looks like.
You only ever see prices
You can’t see the shop’s costs here, and that’s on purpose. The price panel, the quote, and the PDF show prices only — never what the shop pays for materials or labor, and never its profit math. The full cost breakdown lives on the owner’s Settings screen and never appears on a quote. Owners can read Tuning your prices to learn how the prices behind these numbers get set.