Cabinet estimating software is necessary for today’s highly competitive kitchen industry. More than ever, cabinet manufacturers need an easy, simple, and quick way to track labor, costs, and timelines to be able to stay on top of their processes and make sure to stay profitable.
But cabinet makers are not the only ones in the industry who need a systematic and automated solution that will help them solve their challenges in 2023. Cabinet dealers, on the other end of the process of cabinet sales, also need an effective solution joint with their manufacturers’ processes. Such an automated solution would help both parties work together, and save money, resources, labor, and time.
With the right automated kitchen cabinet estimating software, working out accurate cabinet pricing is immeasurably easier. What’s best, such a tool will help manufacturers include in the pricing more than just materials and labor but also equipment, inventory, and other expenses. Only when you’re able to consider and calculate all the costs that involve the process of cabinet manufacturing will you be able to correctly estimate and price the cost of cabinets. Read on to learn how to enhance efficiency, minimize errors, and save labor by getting accurate cabinet estimates and keeping your cabinet projects on the determined timeline and on budget in 2023.
Main Features of Cabinet Estimating Software
The task of accurately estimating and pricing cabinets determines cabinet manufacturer business success. Whether you’re a small cabinet manufacturer just starting out in the industry or a large and well-established kitchen cabinetry manufacturer company, you’ll be smart to start generating greater profits and raise your bottom line with the help of cabinet estimating software.
An ideal estimating software for cabinet makers needs to have certain customized features to help them enhance their workflow efficiency and optimize their profits.
So, what are some of the main features that an effective cabinet estimating software should possess?
Easy Pricing feature is one of the main features and benefits that a cabinet manufacturer should be able to offer to their dealers. Stock cabinet manufacturers, RTA cabinet manufacturers, semi-custom, and custom cabinet manufacturers should be able to provide the dealers they work with with a simple and easy way to easily price their cabinets
Price Comparison is another important feature cabinet dealers need. When it comes to pricing kitchens, being able to compare prices between different cabinetry lines within one manufacturer or between different brands is an essential and often determining factor for end customers and their cabinetry decisions.
Cabinet Catalog feature helps manufacturers showcase their kitchen cabinet lines to more dealers, improve their branding, shorten the sales cycle, get more orders, enhance user experience, and connect with their current dealers on a deeper level. Effective cabinetry estimating software should contain this benefit and offer it to their customers for a complete service.
Ordering Cabinets is a process that can often get complicated, especially when there isn’t proper communication between cabinet manufacturers and their dealers. To achieve effective communication between manufacturers and retailers, they need a solution that will enhance their mutual communication and internal correspondence. The best cabinet estimating software will be capable to provide them with this ability.
Accepting Orders is very important for cabinetry manufacturers just as the ease of placing orders and ordering cabinets is important for their dealers. Ordering cabinets and accepting cabinetry orders are two sides of the same process and both need to be easy, simple, and fool-proof in order for both parties to be successful and satisfied.
Customer Service is a very important part of any estimating software for cabinet makers. The tool needs to empower all of its users to serve their customers flawlessly and provide impeccable service.
Job Tracking feature lets you keep track of all of your processes, tasks, and progress, which is essential for tracking costs and labor time. A cabinet estimating software with this benefit will empower your employees to work efficiently, manage their time properly, and help you estimate costs more precisely.
Custom Integrations, finally, add additional value and provide customized usage. For example, an integration with QuickBooks enables users to seamlessly export confirmed job orders as invoices into Quickbooks Enterprise. When it comes to pricing kitchen designs, 2020 Kitchen Design automated export to Netsuite allows pricing cabinet parts, adding custom modifications and charges, and creating quick proposals for your customers. Integrating with ERP applications that cabinet manufacturers or dealers already use, such as Acumatica integration, NetSuite Oracle, or Cabinet Vision, for example, is certainly a big plus for estimating automated tools.
Advantages of Using Kitchen Cabinet Estimating Software
Using custom cabinet estimator software brings multiple advantages and benefits to cabinet manufacturers and cabinet dealer sales professionals. Let’s talk about some of the most important advantages.
Time Savings
A typical cabinet estimating process, when done properly, would need to include many stages and phases, such as obtaining all the details needed for defining the estimating project, developing the structure, defining the staffing needed for the task, creating a rough estimate and plan, assessing risk and considering adjustments, validating the estimate by other team members, and reviewing it with client and end-user. However, with an efficient custom cabinet estimator software, you save time on all of these steps because the tool has everyone already included in the process and everyone can keep track of the estimation progress.
Labor and Money Savings
Saving on labor is closely connected to money savings for any cabinet business professional. When trying to save on labor, cabinet manufacturing companies and cabinet retailers may start to reduce the number of employees, spread their time across many different tasks, reallocate employees, or even implement a freeze in hiring. With professional estimating software for cabinet makers, saving on labor is easy, because everything is automated and requires minimum time and money on your end.
Automation of Sales Order Entries
Saving on labor means saving time on time-consuming, simplified manual tasks that besides time take a lot of effort but are still needed and necessary within the ordering process. Automating this kind of task is a lifesaver for the whole sales team as it enables them to focus on more meaningful work where their effort, knowledge, and skill will matter more and in a different way. Automation of sales order entries will save you hundreds of hours of work and allow you to focus on improving the sales process or on advanced planning. Simple administrative tasks like sales order entries can be automized within a cabinet ordering system.
Advanced Communication
Professional estimating software will include capabilities of real-time communication, collaboration, and connectivity for everyone working on the project. Real-time messaging, calls, invites, and sharing will be enabled for the whole team and everyone included, both on the manufacturer and dealer side. Advanced communication keeps the entire team well-informed and aligned at all times.
Error Minimization
Mistakes happen. Regardless of how experienced kitchen cabinet professional you are, errors will sneak up on you. Judgment, duplication, omission, computation, scope, price changes, miscommunication with your colleagues, design errors – errors in these areas are possible and happen all the time. Keep errors to a minimum by using customized cabinet estimator software. While adjusting modifications, adding notes, and letting the system do all the work for you – error-free – you’ll be able to focus on important work such as checking configurations and acknowledging orders or asking for revisions.
Enhanced Customer Satisfaction
Establish new and fortify already existing relationships with customers. Further professionalizing and automating your work, thus making it faster and error-free, delight your customers and take their satisfaction to the next level. Each and every member of the team will find it easy to communicate, create daily logs, follow up, and be on time and on point regarding all client demands and requirements. This will, naturally, lead to enhanced customer satisfaction, more cabinet orders created, and more kitchen projects completed.
Implementation and Integration of Cabinet Estimating Software
If you have found and chosen a cabinet estimating system, now is the time to implement and integrate it into your work process. Here are the basic steps of implementation and integration of cabinet estimating software.
Setup Process and Requirements
A kitchen cabinetry estimation software will unite manufacturers, dealers, catalogs, and systems, including accounting, job tracking, ordering, and inventory, in a single, cohesive platform. Setting up this system won’t happen overnight but with a little bit of effort, when it’s all setup and ready to run, you’ll save immeasurably more effort. Software, customized to your particular needs, will effectively address the distinctive challenges, requirements, and product interests of your business. To start the process, all you need to do is to fill out the form and request your complimentary demo.
Training & Onboarding Users
When the demo of the estimating software was shown to you, you will probably get a gist of the whole picture or a bird-view of the complete estimating system. The demo, or demonstration is the first instance when you can see how and if the cabinet estimation system being shown fits with your kitchen business. Then is the time to ask all of the questions you will surely have about the software. After you’ve realized it’s the right fit, you’ll receive training and go through an onboarding process that doesn’t last long and you have full-time support, on demand.
Integration with Existing Workflows and Tools
The whole point of using cabinetry ordering and estimating software is to fit it with your processes, workflows, and projects, making them simpler, easier, and faster. This is why the professionals from the software company will work with you to integrate the app with your already existing tools and workflows. If there is an app you’re already using, they will integrate kitchen cabinet estimating software with it, creating a platform where you will have everything you and your team need to do the best work.
Data Migration
You don’t need to worry about this part. The professionals from the software company will complete data migration and assist you in assessing all the facts and challenges around the process, making sure you understand every aspect of it. They will provide you with the advice and insights you need for a successful and easy transition.
Case Studies & Success Stories
When choosing the best cabinet estimating software for your kitchen manufacturing or dealer business, look into case studies and success stories the software helped happen. This is one of the fastest and easiest ways to see how the clients like you use the product and how they achieve success with it. You may also learn here about some other innovative features and capabilities of the software that you may have not been aware of. For example, KitchenDEV cabinet pricing and estimating software success stories clearly show how kitchen businesses that use it work smarter and exceed their goals.
It is how Aqua Kitchen and Bath Design Center from Wayne, NJ improved the accuracy and quality of their proposals with KitchenDEV Dealer Portal & Order Automation. This winning team has accelerated and improved its customer service by more than 50 percent since it started using KitchenDEV. “I’ve been using KitchenDEV’s Cabinet Pricing & Ordering app for pricing kitchen and bathroom layouts. It’s very useful for me. It takes away the stress of having all items in 2020 for pricing. This is a quicker way for me to price out these items and give my customers the proposals” says Susan, Aqua’s kitchen and bath designer.
Another cabinet dealer success story with KitchenDEV comes from Long Island City, NYC, and Home Art Tile Kitchen & Bath. well-established cabinet showroom. In less than 4 months, Home Art Tile saw significant improvements in staff productivity, process effectiveness, and the number of sales. Working with customers on the KitchenDEV app rather than on multiple Excel files and printed books, helped them to professionalize their work, too. Saving time is another benefit of the KitchenDEV app because everything is in one place including parts, docs, and links. ‘’It’s faster to create proposals this way’’, says Omer from Home Art Tile Kitchen & Bath.
A cabinet manufacturer success story comes from Doral, Florida, and Adornus Cabinetry LLC, a company that saved time and reduced errors by 98% with KitchenDEV’s automated order entry system. KitchenDEV’s dealer portal has completely revolutionized the way they take orders from their dealers.
“One of the things we appreciate most about KitchenDEV is the ease with which our dealers can access pricing information for Adornus kitchen cabinets that they configure. The process is seamless, and dealers can easily obtain quotes without having to navigate through complex systems. In addition, the shipping feature offered by KitchenDEV is highly customizable, and dealers can view live quotes, which has proven to be a valuable tool. The combination of these two features has significantly improved our dealers’ experience and streamlined our overall order process”, says Teddy Li from Adornus Cabinetry.
Why Consider KitchenDEV for Kitchen Cabinet Estimation?
The best cabinet estimating software will allow you to accelerate the growth of your cabinet business. This is basically a CPQ (configure-price-quote) software that connects cabinet manufacturers and their cabinet production process to sales. It is an integrated, holistic system that makes all work streamlined and basically flawless, leaving no room for errors or miscalculations.
KitchenDEV is a highly customized B2B and CPQ solution perfect for both cabinet manufacturers and cabinet dealers. Made by professionals with years of experience working with both manufacturers and dealers, KitchenDEV Cabinet Pricing and Ordering app brings together every little step and stage together, ensuring that the whole process is done accurately, fast, and easily.
KitchenDEV is a software platform for managing kitchen businesses that seamlessly connects 2020 design, catalogs, inventory, accounting, sales, order management, and customer service. It’s an innovative yet simple solution tailored for manufacturers, distributors, and retailers to enhance their workflow efficiency.
Consider KitchenDEV for your business to simplify and streamline your work using:
Dealer Portal
Dealer portal and order automation give you everything a cabinet manufacturer may need to organize, manage, and present their cabinet catalog to dealers, accept orders, and integrate with their accounting and inventory systems such as Netsuite, Acumatica & Quickbooks.
Manufacturers can manage their catalog on their own or with the help of KitchenDEV experts, enabling their dealers to use it with login, automate orders, track jobs, import 2020 designs, and more.
2020 to ERP Connector
KitcheDEV will act as your bridge application between 2020 Design and an ERP you already use, such as Netsuite, Acumatica & Quickbooks. Thanks to the 2020 to ERP Connector, you can import kitchen designs and export them as sales orders to the ERP you use.
Import 2020 designs, use automated SKU mappings, and choose to export your designs to key workflow systems like Netsuite, Quickbooks, or Acumatica.
Capabilities for Cabinet Dealers
Cabinet dealers will also find KitchenDEV an irreplaceable asset because of the easy pricing and ordering cabinets from stock manufacturers they work with within the Cabinet Retailer Suite. Not only that they can determine cost and price cabinets but they can also compare prices and offer options to their customers. For even quicker pricing that can happen during walk-ins, cabinet dealers can import kitchen designs from 2020.
Importing 2020 designs would be the first step with any customer after which comes easy pricing, price comparison between different cabinet lines, styles, or cabinet brands, customer management, and finally, export to an accountancy system such as Quickbooks.
These are just some of the benefits that KitchenDEV brings to the process of cabinet sales and to all who are included in it. Contact us for a free demo, and we’ll make sure to show you how to streamline your operations and improve your overall efficiency with KitchenDEV. Reducing and even eliminating errors, saving time and labor, and optimizing cabinet order processing have never been easier.
Conclusion
Why battle the challenges that everyone in the kitchen industry is faced with? There is no reason to lose time, labor, and money due to wrong estimations, miscalculations, poor workflow organization, and errors in the process when you can power up the sales of kitchen cabinets simply and effortlessly. There is a way to price directly from design, in a single app – cabinet estimating software by KitchenDEV– present, compare prices, accept orders, work as a team in real-time, and order seamlessly in minutes. Our estimating software for cabinet makers and dealers has accelerated the sales of many kitchen manufacturer and dealer businesses across the USA and Canada thanks to always up-to-date cabinet manufacturer catalogs and premium automatization of all of the process stages.
KitchenDEV helps you save on time, money, and labor, lets you automate and streamline the most important part of your work, lets you minimize errors, and increases customer satisfaction, thus increasing cabinet sales. This is why KitchenDEV is not only a work changer and paradigm shifter, but it’s also a life changer as it will simplify and make your life incomparably easier.
So, don’t wait to try it out. 2023 is the best year to start with it. Our professionals stand by to show you all the benefits of the best cabinet estimating software in the kitchen industry.