Applies to: Core, Advanced, Enterprise
Before accepting real customer orders, test your Quote & Cut pricing carefully.
Starter values from the setup wizard are only a starting point.
Your live pricing should be based on your own material costs, machine costs, cutting data, and business rules.
Prepare test files #
Use DXF files from real jobs if possible.
Choose a range of examples:
- A simple small part.
- A part with several holes.
- A large part.
- A nested multi-part job.
- A job that nearly fills one sheet.
- A job that uses more than one sheet.
- A part made from a cheaper material.
- A part made from a more expensive material.
Compare with manual pricing #
For each test file, compare Quote & Cut against your existing manual quote or expected selling price.
Check:
- Material cost.
- Machine time.
- Gas cost.
- Pierce cost.
- Markups.
- Minimum price per part.
- Per-sheet costs.
- Delivery costs.
- Advanced Secondary Process costs, if used.
Enable diagnostics #
During testing, enable diagnostics from:
Quote & Cut → Settings → Diagnostics
Enable:
Enable frontend diagnostics for logged-in administrators
This lets logged-in administrators see a detailed cost and time breakdown after a calculation.
Do not treat diagnostics as customer-facing quote text. It is mainly for setup and troubleshooting.
Test different quantities #
Run the same part at different quantities.
For example:
- Quantity 1.
- Quantity 5.
- Quantity 10.
- Quantity 50.
- Quantity 100.
Check that the price scales in a way that makes sense for your business.
Test each pricing model #
If you are not sure which pricing model to use, test the same files with:
- Full Sheet Cost.
- Prorated Bounding Box Cost.
- Straight Cut Off.
Compare the results and choose the model that best matches your pricing approach.
Test small parts carefully #
Small parts are easy to under-price.
Check that your settings protect small jobs using:
- Fixed Markup Per Part.
- Minimum Price Per Part.
- Percentage Markup.
- Sensible cutting speeds.
- Sensible pierce times.
Test expensive materials carefully #
Expensive materials are also important to test.
Check that:
- Sheet cost is accurate.
- Pricing model is appropriate.
- Uplift settings are sensible.
- Minimum price is not too low.
- Material utilisation is being charged correctly.
Test multi-material quotes #
If customers can upload multiple parts with different materials, test a quote that uses more than one material.
Check that each material is priced correctly.
Test checkout #
After testing the price result, add the job to the cart and place a test order.
Then check the WooCommerce order.
Confirm that:
- The correct parts are shown.
- The correct quantities are shown.
- The quote price is carried into the cart.
- Delivery options behave correctly.
- Generated order files appear as expected.
- The order data is useful for production.
Review before going live #
Before going live, confirm:
- Materials are correct.
- Sheet costs are correct.
- Sheet sizes are correct.
- Density values are realistic.
- Cutting speeds are realistic.
- Pierce times are realistic.
- Gas costs are correct.
- Machine hourly rate is correct.
- Pricing model is correct.
- Markups and minimums are correct.
- Test quotes match your expected pricing.
Ongoing review #
Pricing should be reviewed regularly.
Update your Quote & Cut settings when:
- Material costs change.
- Gas costs change.
- Machine costs change.
- You add new materials.
- You change cutting data.
- You adjust your business margin.
- You notice quote results that do not match your expectations.
