Machine Shop Quote Template: What a Good Quote Contains, Line by Line

Your shop name and contact, the customer and the buyer's name, the customer's RFQ number, your quote number, a quote revision letter, the issue date, and an expiration date. Revisions matter: when the buyer asks for a 75-piece option, issue Rev B rather than editing the original, so both sides can see what changed.

Expiration is the line small shops skip most often and regret most. Material prices move through the year; a quote without an expiry is an open-ended price promise. Thirty days is a common default, shorter when the material is volatile, with a line stating that expired quotes will be re-priced.

Each line carries the customer part number (and your internal number if different), the drawing revision you quoted, a short description, material, and finish. Quoting to a stated revision is your protection when the buyer sends a newer print with the PO.

Then quantity breaks: typically three or four quantities, each with a unit price and extended price. The breaks are where setup amortization shows up — four hours of setup at $95/hour is $380 spread across 25 parts ($15.20 each) or 100 parts ($3.80 each). Show the breaks the buyer asked for, plus one larger quantity if your setup cost makes it noticeably cheaper per part.

Separate one-time charges onto their own lines: first article inspection, special fixtures, programming, or tooling (often called NRE). Burying them in the unit price makes the reorder look overpriced and invites a price fight.

Your internal worksheet should show, per op, setup hours and cycle minutes at the work center's rate; material as parts per bar with kerf, facing and end allowance, bars to buy, and drop; outside processing at the vendor's lot minimum; scrap allowance; and margin per break. The customer sees the result, not the build-up.

The material line is where hand math goes wrong. A 12-foot bar with a 2.5-inch part, 0.125-inch kerf, and facing allowance doesn't yield 57 parts; once kerf, facing, and the chuck-end remnant are taken out, the real count is noticeably lower. Use the bar stock calculator on this site to get parts per bar, bars needed, and drop length before you price.

State lead time from receipt of PO (and from receipt of material, if customer-supplied), and note outside processing that drives it. List the documentation included: C of C, material certs, first article inspection report, inspection data — and anything beyond that will be quoted separately. Aerospace and defense customers flow down quality clauses on the PO; reference that your quote assumes standard requirements unless flow-downs were provided with the RFQ.

Close with commercial terms: payment terms (Net 30 is common), shipping terms and who pays freight, over/under shipment tolerance, how revisions or quantity changes after PO are handled, and your standard terms and conditions attached or linked. Add an assumptions line — 'quoted per drawing Rev C, material 6061-T6 per customer spec, break edges per standard practice' — so disagreements surface before the job instead of at inspection.

A spreadsheet with this layout and a PDF export is a perfectly good machine shop quote template. Keep one file per quote named by customer part number and revision so you can find it on the repeat.

What templates can't do: tell you whether the buyer opened it, let them accept with a PO attached, or remind you what the part actually cost last time. Traveler is being built to produce this quote from a routing, track when it's viewed, and let the buyer accept on a phone — designed to turn acceptance into a job automatically. Planned pricing is $109/month flat with unlimited users.