The Tool You Trust Might Be Holding You Back

If you're quoting wire harnesses in Excel, you're not alone. Most manufacturers we speak to have built quoting processes over years—sometimes decades—using complex spreadsheets, custom macros, and tribal know-how.

But the reality is: what worked before doesn’t work anymore.

In today’s competitive market, quote speed, accuracy, and scalability are no longer nice-to-haves. They’re the difference between winning and losing new business. This article will help you see why sticking with Excel might be holding your business back—and how Quoteque gives you an edge.

The Risks of Excel-Based Quoting

1. Slow Turnaround Kills Deals

The average quoting turnaround time in this industry is 1–3 weeks. But we’re in a market where:

• Customers expect same-day or next-day responses

• Competitors are investing in quoting speed

• Quote timing alone can win or lose you the job

If you can quote in half the time of your competitors, you gain a massive edge in capturing new business.

2. Manual Effort From Your Most Valuable People

The Excel process relies on your most experienced estimators, engineers, and purchasing staff. People who should be driving innovation, not formatting cells and chasing part data.

And with the average non-automotive win rate for new business being 20%, you’re spending 80% of your quoting time and energy on sunken costs.

3. Accuracy Issues

Inaccurate quotes happen for a few common reasons:

• Relying on outdated ERP data

• Missing critical details from customer drawings

• Guessing on missing components or UOMs

• No standardized part alternatives or tribal rules

Quote too high, and you lose the deal. Quote too low, and you lose your margin.

Excel vs Quoteque

BOM Creation

In Excel, creating a BOM requires:

• Copying and pasting line-by-line from PDFs or scanned drawings

• Manually cleaning up formats and data

• Converting customer part numbers to MPNs (often using tribal knowledge)

• Using calculators or macros to align UOMs

• Consolidating BOMs manually across assemblies and batch sizes

• Standardizing nothing—every estimator does it differently

This takes hours per assembly, often introduces inconsistencies, and becomes impossible to scale.

With Quoteque:

• Drag and drop any file such as PDF, Excel, TIFF, even native CAD and get a clean, structured BOM within minutes

• Automatically convert customer part numbers into actual MPNs

• Apply built-in logic for common substitutions, alternates, and tribal shortcuts like “blk tape” = black Tesa ¾”

• Standardize BOMs across all quotes, so anyone on your team can step in and contribute

• Handle batch quoting with built-in size configurations and automated rollups

The result: clean, fast BOM generation that anyone can run, not just your most experienced estimator.

Engineering

Engineering for harness quotes is painful in Excel. Most customer drawings are incomplete or ambiguous. That means:

• Wire lengths need to be estimated

• Protective coverings guessed based on experience

• Connectors missing terminals or seals

• Seal plugs overlooked

• Wire gauges and cavity combinations not validated

All of this relies on the tribal knowledge of one or two engineers, and often leads to bottlenecks.

With Quoteque:

• Leverage engineering insights from our components database of 2,000,000+ parts

• Given a from-to list, Quoteque autopicks missing terminals, cavity plugs, seals based on connector compatibility and wire gauge

• Calculates protective covering requirements from bundle diameter logic

• iHarness topology tool traces drawings and calculates exact wire lengths from the PDF

• Reduces the need for deep, manual engineering intervention on every quote

The result: more of your team can execute engineering steps reliably and quickly, and your most skilled engineers stay focused on high-value work.

Material Sourcing

Excel-based sourcing involves:

• Building pivot tables to consolidate BOMs

• Manually cross-referencing ERP systems to check inventory

• Emailing dozens of RFQs to multiple vendors for each part

• Waiting days for responses, tracking them in different tabs

• Comparing vendor quotes in clunky spreadsheets

• Following up via email threads to manage requotes

This is slow, disorganized, and hard to repeat at scale.

With Quoteque:

• We integrate with your ERP to show live inventory alongside BOM items

• We connect via API to distributors like Digikey, Mouser, Arrow, IEWC, and more

• We pull real-time data, not cached results, so you see what’s actually available

• Your contract pricing and allocations show up automatically when you link your account (no tech skills needed)

• RFQs and requotes can be handled inside the platform—no email threads or follow-ups needed

• Alternate parts and substitutions are automatically recommended

The result: you quote with the precision and speed of a 10-person team, even if it’s just you in the chair.

Your New "Unfair Quoting Advantage"

The spreadsheet you built over the years has served you well. But quoting today is faster, more competitive, and more complex than ever before.

If you’re:

• Tired of long quote cycles

• Struggling to scale your team’s effort

• Losing deals to faster competitors

• Unsure about the accuracy of your quote data

…it’s time to switch from spreadsheets to systems.

Quoteque gives wire harness manufacturers an unfair advantage: faster quoting, smarter sourcing, easier scaling, and standardized processes anyone can run.

Don’t let quoting be the bottleneck that keeps you from growing.

Ready to see how your Excel process compares?
Let us show you what quoting looks like with Quoteque.