Nteli vs. spreadsheet estimating.
Where spreadsheets genuinely win
- Cost and control: free, no vendor, no sign-up, fully yours.
- Flexibility: a one-off oddball quote needs no rule change — you just type it.
- Zero learning curve: every estimator you'll ever hire already knows Excel.
- Right-sized for simple products: few options, stable prices, low volume — a sheet is honestly the correct tool.
If that's your shop, stop reading and keep the sheet. Seriously.
Where they break
Spreadsheets price what you type; they don't check whether what you typed can be built. The moment options interact — motor current vs. main sizing, SCCR vs. available fault current, connector vs. gauge, cooling vs. enclosure rating — the checks live in your senior estimator's head. The sheet computes a price for configurations that don't exist, and the error is discovered on the floor, at test, or in the field, where it's paid for out of margin.
The second break is capacity. A hand-built quote for a configured product takes a senior estimator roughly half a day — call it two quotes per estimator per day — so RFQs queue behind your best person, and the quotes you never answered are the invisible cost. The third is institutional: the quote and the submittal are built twice by different people, prices drift from stale tabs, and when the estimator retires, the rules retire with them.
The comparison, straight
| Spreadsheet | Nteli Agent Pricing Engine | |
|---|---|---|
| Upfront cost | Free | Free to start self-serve with a starter pack; a fixed-fee onboarding engagement if we build your pack for you |
| Oddball one-offs | Type anything | Custom lines supported; true one-offs are faster in a sheet |
| Compatibility checks | In the estimator's head | Cited rules — every size and refusal shows its source |
| Who can quote | The senior estimator | Anyone on the team — the AI asks, the engine checks |
| Throughput | ~2 hand-built quotes/estimator/day | The conversation assembles it; the constraint moves to demand |
| Consistency | Depends who touched it last | Identical facts → identical quote, always |
| Quote → submittal | Built twice | Same quote produces the submittal: ratings, layout, one-line, BOM |
| Audit trail | None | Every number traces to a rule and a version |
| Knowledge risk | Retires with the estimator | Rules are owned, governed and audited by the company |
The honest cost of switching
The real price isn't software — it's encoding the rules: what goes with what, what's forbidden, what it costs. Anyone selling you a configurator without saying that is selling you a blank rules editor and a project. Nteli's answer is vertical starter rule packs — panels, cable assemblies, HVAC, pumps, hazardous-area and more — so you start from a working pack built from decades of configuring these products, then override it with your own rules, governed and audited. Your estimator's knowledge goes into an asset the company owns instead of walking out at retirement.
The spreadsheet's real cost was never the license. It's the quote you couldn't send, the panel that bounced, and the rules that live in one person's head.
Want the regime test? Two questions: do your options constrain each other, and do RFQs queue behind your best estimator? Two yeses and the sheet is costing you more than the engine will. Run your own numbers on the leak-ledger calculator — the rates and their math are public.
Don't take the table's word for it.
Send a real RFQ you quoted recently, names removed. You'll get back what the engine produces — compare it with your spreadsheet's version. No deck, no pitch.