Quote to Cash · step 1 of 11
Receiving an RFQ
A customer asks what something would cost. Before anyone prices it, someone has to decide whether the request is complete, whether it is worth answering, and who is going to answer it.
Also called: Enquiry handling · Bid intake · Tender receipt · Quote request
- Owned by
- Inside Sales / Sales Coordinator
- Also involved
- Account Manager, Estimator / Cost Engineer
- Documents
- Request for Quotation (RFQ)
- Measured by
- Quote Conversion Rate
What it is
An RFQ — request for quotation — is a customer asking for a price against a defined specification. It is not an order and it is not a promise to buy. It is a question, and the company that answers it best usually wins.
RFQs arrive in wildly different shapes. A machine shop might get a single email with a PDF drawing attached. A tier-one automotive supplier gets a portal submission with a 40-page commercial pack, a bill of materials, a drawing set, packaging requirements and a demanded response date. Both are RFQs. The work at this step is the same in either case: capture it, check it, and decide whether to bid.
This step ends the moment someone is formally assigned to cost the job. Everything before that assignment — logging, chasing missing information, deciding it is worth the effort — belongs here.
Why companies do it
Costing takes real hours from expensive people. An estimator who prices everything that arrives will spend most of the week on work the company was never going to win, and will be too rushed on the ones it could have. Screening the request first — is it complete, is it in our capability, do we want this customer, can we hit the date — is how a quoting function stays solvent. It also protects the customer relationship: telling someone on day one that you cannot meet their date is a better answer than a quote that arrives late and misses it anyway.
Inputs and outputs
What has to be there first
- The request itself — Request for Quotation (RFQ)
Email, portal submission, or a formal RFQ pack.
- Drawings, specifications or a bill of materials — Customer engineering
Without a revision number on the drawing, the whole quote is unanchored.
- Quantity and expected schedule — Customer purchasing
Annual volume and call-off pattern, not just a one-off number.
- Response deadline — Customer purchasing
- Customer history and current account status — Credit Controller
An account on stop should not be quoted without a conversation first.
What it produces
- A logged enquiry with a reference number — Inside Sales / Sales Coordinator
- A bid / no-bid decision — Account Manager
- A clarification request back to the customer — Customer purchasing
Only when something material is missing.
- A costing assignment — Costing the job
How it is done
01Log the enquiry the day it arrives
Give it a reference, record the customer, the date received, the date the answer is due, and where it came from. This is the only reliable way to know later how many enquiries were received and how many were won — and it is the step most often skipped when the request came in as a personal email rather than through a shared inbox.
02Check the pack is complete
Confirm you have a drawing or specification with a revision, a quantity, a required date, and the commercial terms being asked for. Missing revision numbers, missing tolerances and missing quantities are the three that cause the most damage, because a quote can be produced without them and nobody notices until the order lands.
03Confirm it is within capability
Size, tolerance, material, process, certification, capacity. It is cheaper to decline in an hour than to win work you cannot make. If it is close to the edge of capability, this is where engineering gets asked, not after the price has gone out.
04Make the bid / no-bid call
Weigh the value of the opportunity against the cost of quoting it, the probability of winning, and whether the resulting work is the kind you want. Record the reason for a no-bid — the pattern in those reasons is worth more than any single decision.
05Raise clarifications in one batch
If the pack is incomplete, go back once with every question, not four times over a fortnight. Log the date you asked and the date they answered, because the clock on your response deadline usually should not be running while you wait.
06Assign an estimator and a deadline
Name the person and set an internal due date earlier than the customer's. Costing hands back to sales, and sales needs time to review the price before it goes out — a quote produced on the customer's deadline is a quote nobody reviewed.
What needs approval
Approvals only work when they happen before the commitment. Retrospective approval is a manager being told what has already been promised.
| Trigger | Approver |
|---|---|
| New customer with no trading historyA credit check before quoting, not after the order arrives. | Credit control |
| Enquiry outside the standard capability list | Engineering or operations manager |
| Formal tender with contractual terms attachedLiability caps, penalty clauses and payment terms are agreed here or not at all. | Commercial or finance director |
Four enquiries arrive in one morning
A worked example with real numbers.
A subcontract machining company receives four RFQs on the same Monday. The coordinator logs all four, checks the packs, and by lunchtime has made four different decisions.
Enquiry 1041 is complete and routine: an existing customer, a repeat part, a new quantity. It goes straight to the estimator with a two-day internal deadline.
Enquiry 1042 is missing the material specification and the drawing has no revision. It is held, and a single clarification email goes back listing both questions. The response deadline is 12 days away; the coordinator asks for it to move by however long the answer takes.
Enquiry 1043 asks for a 12-day lead time on a part needing an outside heat treatment that has a 10-day queue. It is declined the same day, with a note offering 20 days. The buyer takes the 20 days — the deadline was aspirational, and nobody else had told them the truth.
Enquiry 1044 is a large tender from a customer who has never traded with the company and whose terms demand 90-day payment with a liability clause. It is escalated to the commercial director rather than being quoted quietly by the estimator.
| Ref | Customer | Value (est.) | Due | Decision | Reason |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1041 | Existing — Ardwick | £18,400 | Wed | Bid | Repeat part, capacity available |
| 1042 | Existing — Bellhouse | £64,000 | Fri +2wk | Hold | No material spec, no drawing revision |
| 1043 | New — Corran Ltd | £9,100 | Thu | No bid | Lead time impossible; offered 20 days |
| 1044 | New — Delme Group | £310,000 | Fri +3wk | Escalate | Unreviewed terms, no credit history |
The point
One of the four went to costing. The other three were resolved in under an hour each. If all four had been priced, the estimator would have lost most of the week and the company would still have declined two of them — just three weeks later, and less politely.
Common mistakes
MistakeQuoting from an unrevised drawing
Why it happens: The customer's engineering department issues a new revision while the RFQ is in flight and does not always re-send the pack. The estimator prices revision B; the order is placed against revision D.
What to do instead: Record the revision on the enquiry log and repeat it on the quotation. If the revision on the purchase order does not match the one on the quote, the price is not valid and order entry should stop.
MistakeTreating annual volume as a single batch
Why it happens: The customer writes '5,000 per year'. The estimator prices a batch of 5,000 and gets the setup cost per part almost right by accident. The customer then calls off 200 at a time, and every call-off carries a setup that was never in the price.
What to do instead: Always ask for the call-off pattern, and quote the batch size the customer will actually order. If the quantity is uncertain, quote a price break table instead of one number.
MistakeBidding everything
Why it happens: Saying no feels like losing. So the estimator queue grows, quality of estimating falls, response time slips, and the win rate drops on the enquiries that mattered.
What to do instead: Run the bid/no-bid decision explicitly and record it. If more than about half of everything is being quoted and the conversion rate is low, the screen is not working.
MistakeNot logging enquiries that arrive as personal emails
Why it happens: The enquiry sits in one person's inbox. It never reaches the log, so it is not in the conversion figures, and when that person is on holiday it is not answered at all.
What to do instead: One shared route in. Anything arriving personally gets forwarded to it before it gets worked on.
MistakeLetting the clarification clock run against you
Why it happens: Two weeks are lost waiting for the customer's engineer to confirm a tolerance, but the response deadline never moves, so the quote is rushed at the end.
What to do instead: Acknowledge the RFQ, state the questions, and ask in writing for the deadline to be extended by the time taken to answer them. Most buyers agree; almost none offer.
Where the work happens
- Shared enquiry inbox
- CRM or enquiry log
- Customer procurement portals (Ariba, Coupa, Jaggaer and similar)
- Document management for drawings and revisions
Terminology
- RFQ
- Request for quotation. A request for a price against a defined specification and quantity.
- RFP
- Request for proposal. Used when the customer knows the problem but not the solution, so the supplier is asked to propose an approach as well as a price.
- RFI
- Request for information. A pre-qualification step — capabilities, certifications, capacity — with no price attached.
- Bid / no-bid
- The decision on whether to spend the effort quoting an enquiry at all, made before costing starts.
- Call-off
- A release against an agreed order or schedule. The order exists once; the deliveries are called off from it in batches.
- Revision
- The version marker on a drawing or specification. Quoting against the wrong one is the most common way a correct price becomes the wrong price.
Common questions
›What is the difference between an RFQ, an RFP and an RFI?
An RFI asks whether you can do it at all. An RFP asks how you would do it and what it would cost, leaving the method open. An RFQ asks only for a price against a specification that is already fixed. The more fixed the specification, the more the decision comes down to price — which is why suppliers prefer to be involved before the RFQ stage.
›Is a company obliged to respond to an RFQ?
No. An RFQ is an invitation, not a contract, and declining it carries no legal consequence. Declining early and explaining why usually helps the relationship; going silent does not.
›Should you tell a customer you are not bidding?
Yes, and quickly. Buyers plan around the number of quotes they expect. A no-bid on day one lets them approach someone else; a no-bid discovered on the deadline leaves them exposed, and they remember it.
›How long should it take to acknowledge an RFQ?
Same day is the practical standard, because acknowledgement costs nothing and is the only signal the customer has that the request arrived. That is separate from how long the quote itself takes.
›Who decides whether to bid?
In small companies, whoever received it — which is why the decision is often not really made. Where it works well, sales owns the call with a defined escalation: new customers go to credit control, anything outside the capability list goes to engineering, and formal contractual terms go to whoever is allowed to sign them.
Tools for this
Downloadable, self-contained, and yours to keep — they run in a browser with no account and no data leaving your machine.
- Tender & Bid RegisterProKeep a register of every tender and bid — value, submission deadline, what it cost to bid and how it ended — with win rates by count and by value calculated from decided bids only. Runs entirely in your browser — nothing is uploaded.
- Lead Tracker & Conversion FunnelProTrack every lead from first contact to won or lost, see which sources actually convert, catch the leads going stale before they die quietly, and print a funnel report. Nothing is uploaded.
- RFQ Quote ComparisonProCompare supplier quotes line by line on landed cost — unit price, tooling, carriage, minimum order quantity, lead time and payment terms side by side — and find out which quote is actually the cheapest. Nothing is uploaded.
Reviewed 2026-08-15. Nothing here is legal, tax or accounting advice — contractual and tax practice varies by jurisdiction.