Seven pricing sheets replaced by one controlled quotation system.
A Bangalore architecture and interior fit-out company. Nineteen staff. Seven Google Sheets as the commercial source of truth. A quotation process that worked at lower volumes and became increasingly difficult to control as the business grew.
Outcome
The client
The pricing data was organised. The quotation process was not.
The company managed the full journey from initial design consultation through quotation, client approval, milestone payments, design revisions and project execution. Its catalogue was real, detailed and maintained. The problem was in how that catalogue connected to every proposal a designer produced.
Product information lived across seven Google Sheets covering Xpress woodwork, Xpand woodwork, accessories, services, lighting, stone and quartz, and handles. Designers used those sheets as the commercial source of truth and manually assembled customer quotations one room and one line item at a time. As more designers, products and projects entered the business, the spreadsheet-based workflow became increasingly difficult to control.
Industry
Architecture and residential interiors
Location
Bangalore, India
Platform users
19
Designers
10
Admins / managers
9
Active project creators
11
Client records migrated
335
Product catalogues
7
The problem
Not one broken tool. Five separate control problems.
Creating a quotation for a complete home interior was not a matter of entering one product and one price. A single proposal could include kitchen base units, wall units, tall units, wardrobes, loft storage, accessories, handles, lighting, stone, installation services, design credits, discounts, enablement fees, GST and a project-specific payment schedule. Every item had its own commercial logic.
The company had previously evaluated a specialised interiors platform. The problem was not that the software lacked features. It was that the software imposed its own process and could not adapt to the company's seven-catalogue structure, its Xpress and Xpand product ranges, its category-specific GST treatment, or its tiered payment schedules.
Operational symptoms
The diagnosis
The initial request was: build a quotation tool
But quotation generation was only the visible surface of the workflow. Pressense mapped the full journey: Catalogue to product configuration to measurement to pricing to quotation to client sharing to approval to design credits to payment milestones to project balance. The diagnosis identified five separate control problems.
Catalogue control
How could the company continue updating familiar Google Sheets without allowing those updates to rewrite existing quotations?
Calculation control
How could every designer use the same commercial formulas regardless of product category — without remembering which formula applied to which product type?
Project control
At what point should a quotation stop being editable? And who should be able to change it after that point?
Client control
How could the customer receive a professional, project-specific proposal without needing another account or application?
Commercial control
How could design revisions, payment milestones and outstanding balances remain permanently connected to the original project value?
What Pressense built
A configure-price-quote platform built for the way this business works
The system was built as a complete web application — React and TypeScript frontend, Express and TypeScript backend, PostgreSQL database, shared calculation logic, role-based authentication, secure public proposal links and PDF generation — around the company's catalogue, pricing and approval workflow. The result was not a generic invoice generator. It was a CPQ system built specifically for residential architecture and interior fit-out projects.
1. Seven catalogues into one controlled platform
The system synchronised directly with all seven Google Sheets. Designers no longer accessed those sheets when building a quotation. Catalogue changes affected future selections only — not the commercial values already attached to existing projects.
2. Six guided line-item workflows
Each product category — Woodwork, Accessories, Handles, Services, Lighting, Stone and Quartz — had its own dedicated workflow. Designers were shown only the questions relevant to the selected category, removing the need to remember which formula applied to which product.
3. One shared calculation engine
Area-based products (rate × sq ft × quantity), per-unit products, category-specific GST treatment, enablement fees, markup, discounts and payment schedules all ran through one engine shared by the frontend, backend, stored values and PDF output. The browser and server could not calculate different totals.
4. Branded PDF and client proposal portal
Every project generated a branded PDF and a secure 30-day public link. The customer could view their own project — room-wise pricing, product selections, payment schedule and terms — without creating an account or requesting another document.
5. Finalisation as a hard system state
When a project was marked Generated, every protected edit endpoint returned an HTTP 403. This was not a warning. A finalised quotation could not be changed by a designer, a manager, a catalogue update or an accidental edit. Commercial changes required a controlled revision process.
6. Role-based access across 19 users
Three permission levels: Super Administrator, Administrator/Manager, and Designer. Authorisation was enforced at the server, not just by hiding buttons. Each role could access only the projects and functions relevant to their work.
7. 335 client records centralised
Existing client information was migrated into the platform at launch. The system began with a populated client database, not an empty form. Designers could create new quotations by selecting an existing client record rather than re-entering contact details for every project.
8. Structured design-credit system
Seven defined milestone types — Site Documentation, Layout Finalisation, Design Finalisation, Validation GFC, Final Design Sign-off, Layout Change, Design Revision — each controlled through credit allocation, project limits, approval workflow and usage tracking. Design effort stopped being an unlimited informal attachment.
9. Automatic payment schedules
Three tiers based on project value (up to ₹15 lakh, ₹15–30 lakh, above ₹30 lakh) generated the correct advance and milestone structure automatically. If the project value changed before finalisation, the payment schedule recalculated through the same central engine.
10. Project wallet and quotation analytics
Each project displayed total value, payments received, funding entries and remaining balance. The analytics dashboard covered total quotations, average value, project status, monthly trends and user-level activity — scoped by role.
The redesigned workflow
Every project now has a controlled commercial history
- 1Designer opens several Google Sheets
- 2Products and prices are copied manually
- 3Measurements and square footage are calculated
- 4Taxes, fees and discounts are added
- 5Payment schedule is created separately
- 6Manager checks formulas and totals
- 7PDF is assembled and sent to the client
- 8Later catalogue changes risk affecting active work
- 9Design revisions and payments are tracked elsewhere
- 1Designer creates a client project
- 2Products selected through guided category workflows
- 3Catalogue values enter the project at point of selection
- 4One engine calculates area, quantity, tax and totals
- 5Payment milestones created automatically
- 6Branded PDF and client portal generated
- 7Project locked after finalisation
- 8Design credits and project payments remain connected
The key change was not simply faster PDF creation. The entire commercial history of each project became controlled.
The outcome
78 to 104 hours of monthly capacity. One permanently protected commercial record per project.
78–104 hrs
monthly capacity released at 75–100 quotations per month (52% CPQ benchmark)
936–1,248
hours of annual team capacity released — approximately six to eight employee-months
100%
of projects in Generated status protected by application-layer finalisation
The capacity estimate applies a conservative 52% sector-adjacent CPQ benchmark (Nucleus Research, industrial design and manufacturing) against an operating range of 75 to 100 quotations per month, assuming two hours of manual work per quotation. The company had not yet completed a formal time study at the time of writing.
In a growing interiors business, that released capacity does not automatically mean eliminating a role. It means more quotations prepared, faster response to enquiries, more time spent on design, better proposal quality and the ability to absorb growth without each new project creating another layer of manual coordination.
The clearest change after launch was separation. Current prices could change. Approved quotations could not. The commercial history of every project became permanently controlled the moment a designer clicked Generate.
The bigger picture
A generic product would have required the company to simplify its commercial method
The business did not need another proposal template. It needed software capable of understanding seven live catalogues, six different item structures, area-based and unit-based pricing, category-specific tax rules, tiered payment schedules, design-credit limits, role-based access, price version protection, finalisation controls and client-specific proposal delivery.
A standard product would have required the company to simplify or alter these workflows. The custom platform allowed the business to retain its commercial method and remove the manual work surrounding it.
Pressense diagnosed the full process before writing a line of code, preserved the Google Sheets workflow the team already understood, and built the controlled commercial layer between the catalogue and the customer.
Are your designers building quotations — or rebuilding the same calculations?
Pressense helps architecture, interior-design and project-based businesses turn spreadsheet-dependent commercial processes into focused internal software. We map the way the business actually prices, approves and delivers work, then build the missing system around it.
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