FEATURE REQUEST: PRICE LOCK
I’d love to see a “Price Lock” function added to Flex Rental Solutions.
Here’s the scenario:
A customer gives us a budget, or we agree on a specific rental price. We then continue building and modifying the quote—adding equipment, removing items, changing quantities, swapping gear, etc.
The problem: the agreed-upon price can get lost or changed as the quote evolves.
Proposed Feature: PRICE LOCK
Allow us to lock the agreed-upon price on a quote.
Once the price is locked:
- The agreed rental price stays fixed.
- We can continue adding, removing, or changing equipment on the quote.
- The locked price does not automatically recalculate based on those changes.
- The quote can continue to evolve without losing the negotiated/budgeted price.
- An authorized user could manually unlock the price if a new agreement is reached.
For example:
Customer says, “We have a $5,000 budget.”
We build a quote, make changes, add equipment, remove equipment, swap items around, and eventually agree on $5,000.
Lock Price → $5,000
From that point forward, I can modify the quote all day long, but the customer’s agreed price remains $5,000 until someone intentionally unlocks or changes it.
I could see this being especially useful for budget-based quotes, negotiated pricing, production packages, corporate accounts, and long-running revisions.
It would also be great if Flex could display a small Price Locked indicator on the quote so there’s no confusion for anyone working on it.
Basically: Let us change the quote without changing the deal.
That would be a HUGE quality-of-life improvement for rental companies.
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I completely agree! This should be a basic function in any quoting application.
On top of this, I'd like to see a project-level view where you could define the price for the entire project and see the project's details at a glance.
Ideally, from this "project view" you could set the total sum and define how that sum is distributed across the elements underneath it (quotes, sub-projects, etc.). That way the agreed deal lives at the project level, and the individual elements can keep evolving without breaking it.
At the moment we have to handle this through our own custom integration, but it would be great to have it built into the software itself.
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I will put a little context and ideas behind. There are always deeper questions when you get down a rabbit hole like this.
- Is there a configuration in resource types: [ Price Lock Discount Applies ]
So by default, you could configure Rental = yes, but for Retail, Labor, and other resources, the Discount IS NOT distributed across those line items.
- How do you handle Misc Items in Quote?
- Are you expecting calculations to take Taxes into the equation so that, if you add more quantity of a rental item that is taxed, it locks the functionality by calculating the discount per quantity + tax into the discount?
- If you have a subtotal service fee that adds say 5% of total rental cost to a subtotal line called Prep or Service Fee, is that taken into the calculation?
- Are you getting to a price and then locking it, or is someone typing in a total and expecting the system to back-calculate from there?
As you can see, there are a lot of variables, and it's sometimes hard to program how one customer expects it to work because everyone has different expectations or implementation needs.
That said, we put together a mock-up in a Google Sheet for you to review and share feedback on.
The concept is that you can change a unit quantity up or down, and it will recalculate. You can override a lock to prevent the discount from being calculated on that line. Give your feedback to help with future development.
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Chris,
Thanks for putting this together. Looking at the spreadsheet, I think our thought process is a little different from what the current mock-up is doing.
What we are envisioning is that after the initial quote is built and we have arrived at an agreed-upon price, we activate a “Price Lock” function that holds the quote at a fixed total.
For example:
We build a quote that originally totals $7,500, but after working with the customer we agree to do the entire job for $6,000.
At that point, we activate Price Lock → $6,000.
When Price Lock is activated, it would essentially turn on Price Mute automatically, muting all of the individual line totals. From that point forward, I can add or remove rental items, change quantities, swap equipment, etc., but the $6,000 total does not change.
Any additions or subtractions would simply be reflected in the discount/adjustment line, while the locked total remains $6,000.
So if I add $500 worth of equipment, the quote might show an additional $500 in the discount/adjustment calculation, but the customer-facing total remains $6,000.
Likewise, if I remove $500 worth of equipment, the adjustment changes accordingly, but the total is still $6,000.
The important part for us is that the quote can continue to evolve without changing the agreed-upon deal.
This is actually a function we had in previous rental software we used, RentalPoint. It allowed pricing to be locked/overridden so that changes to the underlying booking didn't automatically change the agreed pricing. That concept is what we're trying to replicate here.
From our perspective, the key is that Price Lock happens after the price has been established. We are essentially saying, “This is the price we agreed to charge the customer, regardless of how the quote changes from this point forward.”
And when we say the fixed price, we are talking about the bottom-line total after tax, if applicable. The Price Lock would then apply to everything on the document, regardless of item type — rental, retail, labor, misc. items, service fees, etc. That way, the price lock represents the actual amount the customer has agreed to pay, rather than simply locking a pre-tax subtotal or only applying to certain resource types.
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Hi Krusty,
I agree this would be a helpful addition to the sales process - it's request we have heard a few times from our clients. One way we've solved this is with a 2-layer quoting process we call 'Solution-Based Quoting'.
- Top layer: Solution Quote. This is a new quote project element and is designed to contain only the big-ticket items that the customer will care about. In some cases that might mean only including the biggest and most important inventory items plus labor; other people like to create virtual items that are outcome-based such as 'Festival Main Stage Lighting rig' or 'Breakout room with Audio and Video', etc
- Bottom layer: Standard itemized quote. Regular quotes as you probably use them - should include all inventory and services required to do the job
Process Steps
Here's a summary of our typical Solution-Based Quoting process steps:- Open deal using a 'Solution Quote'. Create a Solution Quote element, populate it with whatever level of detail is required - could be one single virtual item, could be 20 inventory and labor lines - all depends on the job's requirements and your preferences.
- Set target price. Get the Solution Quote's price wherever you need it to be, whether by setting it manually on a virtual item or calculating from the 'big-ticket' inventory and services involved.
- Send Solution Quote to customer. The PDF that is sent to your customer is nicely-formatted, easy to read, and often only includes a handful of line items. Our standard version includes the ability to show free-text descriptions and hi-res pictures for each line item.
- After deal is won - create itemized quote. After customer acceptance of the solution quote, now you can dive into the details. Create a standard Quote element as a child of the Solution Quote, and add all the gear and services required to actually deliver the job. When appropriate, you can create a child Pull Sheet as normal.
Price Lock
In this scenario the price lock capability is achieved by splitting the customer-facing price from the fully itemized quote. The Solution Quote line items should only be changed if there are agreed changes to the scope of work being delivered, and an updated quote needs to be issued to the customer. Otherwise that initial agreed-upon price remains untouched in the Solution Quote regardless of what is happening a level below in the itemized quote element.Additional Benefits
Some other benefits of this method include:- Sell more faster - salespeople can create and ship quotes with just a handful of line items.
- Simpler customer experience - most customers care about vision and outcomes, not technical details. Give them an attractive proposal that defines the services and outcomes you're providing vs an itemized list of inventory and labor for them to debate.
- Clearer division of labor - in teams where salespeople sell the jobs and production managers are tasked with making it happen, they get to work in separate documents without stepping on each others' toes
- Improved P&L analysis - you can easily compare the 'sold price' from the Solution Quote to the default 'list price' shown in the itemized quote.
I hope this is helpful! I understand a system like this may not be for everyone, but it has certainly been valuable for our customers who have implemented it. Let me know if you have any questions, or reach out directly to hello@squarewave.com.au if you'd like a demo or to connect about anything else.
Cheers,
Bigs
Square Wave - Endorsed Flex Consultancy
www.squarewave.com.au
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