How to restate three software quotations on one scope

One vendor prices a billing module with tax fields, a barcode label printer and a dispatch screen, while another lists the word “billing” as a single line. The third bundles an inventory module you never asked for. The totals look comparable. They are not. Ask the accounts assistant which of these lines would stop an invoice leaving at month-end, and mark that line in red.

Each quotation grows from the vendor’s own template. Every template hides different decisions about hosting, data migration and a year of fixes, covered in one document and missing from the next. Reading three PDFs side by side shows formatting, not scope.

So stop reading them as prices. Treat each one as a list of claims about work, then turn those claims into a single list that you wrote yourself. Keep the three PDFs open in separate windows only when you check a clause, and do all the comparing inside your own sheet where the wording is yours.

Open a spreadsheet with six columns: item, who uses it, vendor A, vendor B, vendor C and note. Fill the item column from your own requirements document, or from what the team does on a normal Tuesday and at month-end. Never copy it from a proposal. Add a seventh column for the owner of each row, so every disputed line has a named person who can say yes or no within a day.

Group the rows. Screens and workflows come first. Then reports, then links to other systems, then the one-off work around launch. Keep each row to one noun, such as purchase order approval or stock transfer between two warehouses.

Aim for forty to eighty rows. Fewer means you are hiding detail, while many more means you are writing the specification, which is a different job. Rows for rarely used features, such as a yearly stock count or a licence renewal reminder, still belong here. They are the lines vendors drop first.

Take one quotation at a time and write a single word per row. Included means the quote names it. Excluded means the quote says it is out of scope. Assumed means the vendor probably intends it but never wrote it down. Use a different colour for each word, so that a glance down the column shows where the vendor was vague.

Assumed is the dangerous word. A line reading standard reports may cover six reports or sixty, and a line reading user training may be one remote call on a Friday afternoon. Give no credit for anything you cannot point to on the page.

Count the words at the foot of each column. A cheap quote with twenty assumed rows is not cheap. It is unfinished. Add up the assumed rows for each vendor and write that figure at the top of the column, because it shows more than any discount.

Email each vendor one list of unclear and assumed rows, and ask each to confirm in writing whether the item is included and what it adds if not. Set a date. Vendors who answer carefully are showing you how the project will be run.

Ask for the price again against your sheet. Two will usually agree to it. One may refuse, which tells you something too. Keep the reply email, the attachment and the date in one folder, since these answers should later be pasted into the contract schedule as written promises.

Share only the scope and never another vendor’s number. You want comparable work, not a bidding war that squeezes the testing out of the plan. Give every vendor the same week to answer, and ask whoever replies late to explain the delay, because a slow answer before signing predicts slow fixes afterwards.

Once the sheet is filled, compare what each vendor covers, what they leave to you and how many rows still carry doubt. Weight the rows that drive daily work, such as invoicing, stock and dispatch, above the rest.

Only now discuss money. Add back anything a vendor dropped. A lower quote that leaves out migration and training can cost more than the highest quote once those are put back in. Where a vendor insists on a single bundled price, ask for the rows to be itemised on a separate page and keep that page with the signed agreement.

Pick the two closest vendors and book a walkthrough of their rows with your own staff in the room. Ask the dispatch clerk or the accounts assistant to say, screen by screen, whether it matches the way they work. Write down what each person said in a note headed with the date, the vendor and the row numbers discussed, and file it with the sheet.