How Quote Generator Is Configured

Quote Generator’s settings come in layers: a floor every tenant shares, the shape of your kind of business, your company’s own configuration, and the changes your administrators make in Admin. This article explains the layers, how a value is worked out from them, and which settings you change in Admin and which NXTC applies for you.

Every tenant’s configuration is put together from three layers, in this order. Your administrators’ changes are kept separately and sit on top.

Layer	What it holds	Who writes it
Base	The arithmetic every tenant shares: the line, unit and quote formulas, the model’s default confidence threshold and preset seeding floor, and the default pricing direction. Nothing about any one business.	NXTC, for every tenant at once
Archetype	The shape of a kind of business: what one quoted unit is, its line types and default quote sections, which way money flows, and the reading instructions the model follows on your documents.	NXTC
Tenant	Your company’s own configuration: families and their specifications, margin tiers, labor departments, formulas and constants of your own, presets, and the optional parts of the app your quotes use.	NXTC, from what you tell us
Your changes	What an administrator changes in Admin: an edited row, a row created there, a row disabled.	Your administrators

Your tenant is built on exactly one archetype. It is chosen when NXTC sets you up, and it is not changed in Admin.

• Parts-and-labor products: a quoted unit is equipment you build, priced from the cost of its parts and labor.
• Catalog-priced services: a quoted unit is a service at the price your catalog states, with no parts or labor lines under it.
• Distance-rated movements: a quoted unit is one load, priced by a rate over a distance worked out from the pieces it carries.

Separately from the archetype, a tenant can declare a quote type that adds screens of its own. Today there is one, cut from stock, for shops that cut pieces from purchased stock lengths. It is a single declared setting, and every screen it adds is absent on a tenant that does not declare it. The two words are easy to confuse: the archetype is the shape of the business, and the quote type is extra machinery on top of it.

To demonstrate a new line of business, NXTC can load a pack: one named bundle of an archetype, a tenant layer, the few records a quote cannot exist without, and the documents that exercise them. Loading a pack replaces the tenant’s configuration rather than adding to it. A pack does not create the tenant, install the app or add users.

How the layers combine depends on the kind of setting.

Kind of setting	How the layers combine
Lists: families, specifications, line types, categories, margin tiers, allowances, labor departments, kits, presets	Every layer’s entries are added together. A layer adds entries; it cannot take one away by leaving it out.
Formulas	A later layer may add formulas but never replace one. The base and archetype formulas are a floor, and a configuration that reuses one of their ids is refused before anything is written.
Single policies: the pricing policy, the optional parts of the app, contingency, the model’s confidence and seeding settings, what a new quote starts with	The last layer that declares the policy wins, whole. A tenant layer that declares one replaces the archetype’s entirely, so it restates anything it means to keep.
Prompt blocks, the reading instructions	Each layer’s text for a block is joined on, base first. An administrator’s edit replaces the whole block, and a reset returns the joined text.

Where nothing declares a value, Quote Generator reads a safe floor rather than guessing: prices are worked out from cost, a new quote starts on the default margin tier, a new quote is valid for 30 days, no model files are read, and no cut-from-stock screen appears.

An administrator’s change in Admin is stored beside the configuration, never inside it. That is what lets NXTC apply an updated configuration without undoing your work.

• A row you edited shows modified, and each field you changed shows the value it replaced, so you can put it back.
• A row you created in Admin is yours: it has no default behind it.
• A row that came from the configuration can be disabled but not deleted. A disabled row stays out of the engine until you restore it.
• A built-in formula, one from the base or the archetype, opens locked as Built-in formula. You can add a formula of your own with + Add a formula on top. On Pricing → Formulas, the filters Your formulas, Customized, Built-in and Everything separate them.

When NXTC applies an updated configuration, every change of yours is laid back over it. Three things can then need you, and the Admin page says so above its boxes, under Configuration health:

• orphaned: “Your customization’s underlying default was renamed or removed by a config update.” Re-attach it to the renamed row, or Discard it.
• conflict: “A config update introduced a default with the same identity as something you created. Yours stays in effect until you decide.” Choose Keep mine as a customization or Adopt the default.
• quarantined: “Your customization no longer passes validation against the updated config — the shipped default is in effect.” Choose Ratify the default (drop my change), or rework it in its editor.

Click Review beside the count to open them. When nothing needs you, the same strip counts your customizations instead; click the count to see What you’ve customized, with Open beside each row.

Each row says where a setting lives in the configuration and where you see it. A page whose rows all come from the base or the archetype shows them read-only, with a note saying they are not edited there. A page your tenant’s shape can never use is not drawn at all.

Setting	Configuration key	Where you see it	Who changes it
Families and their specifications	product_families, specifications	Products; specifications open inside each family	Administrator
Line types and categories	line_types, catalog_categories	Catalog → Line types, Categories	Administrator
Kits and presets	kits, product_presets	Catalog → Kits; presets inside each family	Administrator. Every edit makes a new version.
Labor departments	labor_departments	Labor	Administrator
Margin tiers	margin_tiers	Pricing → Margin Tiers	Administrator
Allowances and contingency	allowance_buckets, contingency	Pricing → Allowances, Contingency	Administrator
Formulas and constants	formula_slots, settings_constants	Pricing → Formulas, Settings & Constants	Administrator, for formulas of your own; built-in formulas are locked
Quote sections	quote_sections	Presentation	Administrator
The model’s confidence threshold, tie margin and preset seeding floor	reconcile_policy, intake_policy	Operations → Prompt Management, under Knobs	Administrator
Prompt blocks	prompt_blocks	Operations → Prompt Management, under Prompt blocks	Administrator
The pricing policy	pricing_policy	On your quotes; see The pricing policy	NXTC, except the price rounding on a cut-from-stock tenant
The optional parts of the app	capabilities	Whether a screen or menu entry appears at all	NXTC
What a new quote starts with: bid validity, delivery weeks, payment terms	quote_defaults	On each new quote, which can then be changed	NXTC
How documents are read: the extraction schemas	extraction_schemas	What an uploaded document produces	NXTC

The setting-by-setting levers, what each ships as and what to watch after moving one, are in Tuning Quote Generator.

One policy decides how money moves on every quote. It is declared in the configuration and, with one exception, is not edited in Admin: on a tenant with the cut-from-stock quote type, Pricing → Price rounding sets price_each_round_up_to. Its keys:

• direction: derived works cost up to a quote total and shares the total back across the units; given takes each unit’s price as entered and adds them up. Absent, it reads derived.
• contingency, margin, delivery_aro: each is on unless the policy says false. Off, the quote no longer shows the contingency row, the margin control or the delivery (ARO) line, and the Contingency or Margin Tiers page says it does not apply.
• recurrence: whether you sell subscriptions. Off unless declared; on, a quote offers a term and a go-live date.
• tier_default: on unless declared false. Off, no margin tier is the default, a new quote starts with none, its total stays blank with “Pick a markup tier to price this quote.”, and sending is refused with “Pick a markup before sending this quote.” until one is picked.
• tier_basis: margin, the floor, prices as cost ÷ (1 − margin); markup prices as cost × (1 + markup).
• price_each_round_up_to: when declared, each unit’s price each is rounded up to the next multiple of this amount, and the difference shows as its own rounding figure rather than being folded in. A quote with declined options is left unrounded.

Every row on it comes from the base or your archetype, and the note above the rows says so. You can add rows of your own where the page offers it, such as a formula on top of a built-in one. To change a declared row itself, contact support.

Your tenant’s shape can never use it, so it is not drawn. A catalog-priced services tenant has no Line types, presets, allowances or generic costs, for example. See your archetype’s article.

Look for Configuration health on the Admin page. A change that no longer fits the updated configuration is held there as orphaned, in conflict, or quarantined, and the row says which value is in effect until you decide.

Contact support with the setting’s name from the table above and the value you want. The change is made in your tenant layer and applied, and your own changes in Admin are kept.

• Quote Generator Help
• Tuning Quote Generator
• Configuration: Parts-and-Labor Products
• Configuration: Catalog-Priced Services
• Configuration: Distance-Rated Movements
• Configuration: Cut-from-Stock Quoting
• Setting Up Quote Generator