Quotation Configurator and Guided Selling

The problem when you sell configurable products in SAP Business One

SAP Business One quotes items. If what you sell is a configuration — a machine with a motor option, a voltage, a control package, a set of accessories and a delivery variant — then the thing you are quoting does not exist as an item until someone decides it does.

So it gets done by hand. A salesperson opens a spreadsheet, picks options from a price list PDF, checks with engineering whether that motor is compatible with that gearbox, guesses a freight cost, applies a discount, and pastes the result into a B1 Sales Quotation as free-text lines or a single dummy item. Three things go wrong every time. Invalid combinations get sold, and engineering finds out after the deposit is taken. The quote's cost is a guess, so the margin the salesperson thinks they signed is not the margin that lands. And when the order is won, someone re-enters the configuration to create the Bill of Materials and the Production Order, introducing a second chance to get it wrong.

Standard B1 has Sales Quotations, price lists, period and volume discounts, and Bills of Materials. It has no option model, no compatibility rules, no live cost roll-up during quoting, and no margin gate before the order is created.

What ECOSIRE builds

We build a configure-price-quote add-on that runs inside SAP Business One and ends by producing a native Sales Quotation and Sales Order in your company database.

Option model and configuration rules

A configuration model is defined as a User-Defined Object (UDO) tree: model → feature groups → features → options, each option linked to a real Item master record or to a cost element. Rules are stored in User-Defined Tables and evaluated by the engine: requires (selecting a high-torque drive requires the heavy frame), excludes (a stainless housing excludes the painted finish option), implies with default, minimum and maximum quantity, and conditional visibility so a feature group only appears when it is relevant. Rules are maintained by your product or engineering team in a B1 form, not in code, so a new option next quarter is a data change.

Guided selling

Instead of asking the salesperson to know the product, the configurator asks the customer's questions in order — application, duty cycle, throughput, environment, voltage, site constraints — and narrows the valid option set as answers come in. Answers can pre-select options, filter incompatible ones out of the list before they can be chosen, and record why a configuration was recommended. The question set is data-driven per model, and the recorded answers stay attached to the quotation so a handover to engineering carries the reasoning, not just the result.

Live costing and margin control

As options are selected the engine rolls up cost from the linked Item masters — your actual item cost by valuation method and warehouse, not a static list — plus labour minutes by operation, bought-in components, freight by weight or volume band, installation and commissioning, and configurable overhead uplift. Sell price is derived from your Price Lists and Business Partner price group with option-level uplifts, or from a target-margin calculation working backwards from cost. The salesperson sees unit cost, sell price, gross margin amount and margin percentage update on every change. A discount or margin below your floor cannot be quoted through: it routes into a native B1 approval procedure, and the Sales Quotation is only released once approved.

Multi-variant quotes and revisions

One opportunity often needs a good, better, best comparison. The add-on holds multiple configured variants under a single quotation header, each with its own option set, cost and margin, and produces a comparison document for the customer. Revisions are versioned rather than overwritten, so you keep the history of what was offered and at what price when a customer comes back three months later.

Output into SAP Business One documents

On acceptance the configurator writes a real Sales Quotation and then a Sales Order through the Service Layer — exploded into component lines, rolled into a configured parent item, or a hybrid, depending on how you want to pick and manufacture. For made-to-order items the configuration generates the variant Item master record and its Bill of Materials, then the Production Order, so engineering and the shop floor receive the exact configuration that was sold with no re-entry. Where you sell from stock, the add-on reserves or backorders against the component Items. The configuration snapshot is stored against the document so the as-sold specification can always be retrieved from the A/R Invoice years later.

Documents and integration

Crystal Reports layouts are delivered for the customer-facing quotation with the option schedule, the internal margin sheet, and the engineering handover specification, registered in Report and Layout Manager so they print and email from the document toolbar. Because the whole engine is exposed through the Service Layer, the same rules can be called from a web quote form or a dealer portal later without duplicating the logic.

Who this is for

Machinery and equipment manufacturers, industrial systems integrators, made-to-order fabricators, modular furniture and joinery, packaging and labelling machinery, HVAC and process skid builders, and distributors whose products carry a large accessory and option matrix. You should be on SAP Business One 10.0 and have product rules that are currently held in people's heads or in spreadsheets.

If you sell a fixed catalogue with no option interdependency, standard B1 price lists and discount groups already do the job and you do not need this.

Technical approach

Built against the SAP Business One Service Layer (REST/OData) for document and master-data creation, with the DI API where the Service Layer does not expose an object. Configuration models, rules, guided-selling question sets and quote variants are registered as UDOs and UDTs so they inherit B1 authorisations, approval procedures, data ownership and Change Log history. Margin gates use native B1 approval procedures rather than a parallel workflow, so approvals appear where your managers already look. Runs on SAP Business One 10.0 on SQL Server and SAP HANA, on-premise or cloud-hosted; where cost roll-up SQL differs between the two platforms it is written per platform rather than reduced to a common subset.

How delivery works

1. Scoping call. We work through one or two representative product families with your engineering and sales people: the option matrix, the real compatibility rules, how cost is currently estimated, your margin floors and approval hierarchy, and whether output is stock, assembled or made-to-order. Output is a written functional specification. 2. Fixed quote. Price and timeline against that specification, in writing. 3. Build. Developed against a copy of your company database with your actual Item masters, Price Lists, Bills of Materials, tax codes and chart of accounts. 4. Install in test. Deployed to your test company. You re-configure a set of quotes you have already won and compare the engine's cost, price and margin against the real outcome until they agree. 5. Install in production. Cutover with the configuration models and rules loaded, and your team trained on maintaining them. 6. Support. A support window covering defect fixes against the agreed specification, source code handed over, and optional help modelling further product families.

Typical lead time is two to four weeks from signed quote, driven mainly by how many product families are in scope and how well documented your compatibility rules already are. Nothing here is off the shelf — the value is in encoding your rules, and that is why it is built to order.