The Rate Lives in One Person's Head.
Estimating produces a price for a new job. This is the other problem: holding the rates you have already agreed with recurring customers — per client, per lane, per tier, with minimums, surcharges and the escalator from a contract signed three years ago — so the number on an invoice comes from the agreement rather than from memory.
The Symptoms, Before the Diagnosis.
Billing stops when one person is away
The rules for who gets which rate live with whoever has been doing it longest. That is a single point of failure sitting in front of your revenue.
Agreed rates get billed wrong
A discount, a minimum or a surcharge is missed, and the invoice goes out under or over. One costs margin quietly; the other costs trust loudly.
Escalators never get applied
A contract allows an annual increase. Nobody has a system that surfaces it, so the increase gets skipped and the rate quietly erodes for the life of the agreement.
Nobody can see what a customer really pays
Across tiers, exceptions and side agreements, the effective rate a large customer actually pays is not visible anywhere — which makes renewal a negotiation you enter blind.
Rate Cards & Contract Pricing, in Scope.
Scope is set against your operation, not against this list — but this is the shape of a build in this line.
Rates held against the agreement
Per customer, per site, per lane or per job type, with effective dates, so the rate that applies to a piece of work is derived from the contract governing it rather than looked up in a spreadsheet.
Tiers, minimums and surcharges as real rules
Daily, weekly and monthly tiers, minimum charges, fuel and material surcharges and volume breaks encoded as logic — including the exceptions, because every business has them and the exceptions are what get billed wrong.
Escalators that surface themselves
Scheduled increases raised as something a person confirms and applies, so the annual uplift a contract already entitles you to stops depending on someone remembering it.
Effective rate, visible
What each customer actually pays once every tier and exception is applied, so renewals and rate reviews start from a number rather than an impression.
We build this from your real agreements, not from a pricing model. Three or four signed contracts — including the awkward one — say more about how your pricing actually works than any workshop, because the exceptions are visible in the documents rather than in what people remember.
The other half is deciding what happens when work does not match any rule. Silently guessing is the failure mode that erodes trust, so unmatched work stops and asks rather than inventing a price.
What It Looks Like When It Works.
The price on an invoice is traceable to the agreement that governs it, anyone in billing can produce it, escalators get applied, and what a customer actually pays is a number you can look at before a renewal rather than after.
- We do not set your prices. The rates, tiers and rules are yours; we make them consistent, applied and visible.
- We do not replace estimating for new work. Producing a price for a job you have not done is the category page above; this is holding the prices already agreed.
- We do not guess at work that matches no rule. It stops and asks a person, every time.
Quote → paid
QuotingAI · AltaPro AI's own product, not client proof
In our own quoting product every tenant brings their own rates, materials, tiers and margin rules, and the engine stays configurable per company while still producing a priced document fast enough to matter. Configurability and speed usually pull against each other; the work is in not letting them. Our product, not a client reference.
Rate Cards & Contract Pricing, Answered.
How Is This Different From Estimating?
Estimating produces a price for work you have not done yet, and that is what the Quoting & Document Workflows page covers. This holds the prices you have already agreed with recurring customers and applies them correctly to work as it happens. Most operations that need one eventually need both.
Can It Handle Our Exceptions?
Exceptions are the reason to build it. A rate structure with no special cases does not need a system; the value appears precisely where there is a minimum that only applies on short jobs, a rate for one customer that predates the current sheet, and a surcharge that applies to two sites out of nine.
What Happens to Work That Matches No Rate?
It stops and asks. An engine that quietly picks a plausible price is worse than one that raises an exception, because the wrong price goes out looking exactly like a right one.
Start with the operation, not the software
Book a 30-Minute Call.
30 minutes. We map how work moves through your business today, show you where it leaks, and hand you a costed plan — whether you build it with us or not.
Edmonton, Alberta · No commitment · 587-937-6948
Where To Go Next.
Up a level
Quoting & Document Workflows
Estimating and document generation built for your own pricing.
More In This Series
Proposal & Contract Automation
Document generated from your numbers, signed in the same flow.
Document Data Extraction
Invoices, POs, specs and tickets read into records instead of retyped.
Field Forms & Site Capture
Inspections and photo evidence captured on site and filed automatically.
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