Using Excel to Build a Quoting System

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name's Dave Andrews. Today I'm going to show you how to use Excel to build a quoting system. Let's open up excel. We're going to create a system that builds a quote based upon data you enter. Let's go start, all programs, select Microsoft Office, let's just open up Excel. This is going to be a really simple quote screen. It's going to allow you to show, type in the quantity of objects that you're quoting, the name of the object that you're quoting, and the total for that object. And then when we're done typing in objects, we're going to add some fields that total everything up. So, let's type in a couple of things. Let's say we're quoting out two computers. We're going to need to add one more field here that is value per object as well as the total. Let's say that the computers we're quoting are worth five hundred dollars. Now for total on each row, we're going to begin a formula that multiplies the value times the quantity. Let's just say equals, click on the quantity for that row, and then type an asterisk which is the little star, and that is how Excel does multiplication, and then click on the value for that row. Press enter. As you can see, it's totaled up the value for those two computers. If I were to make it five computers, your total changes accordingly. Let's add another item. Let's say ten one hour installation labor and the value for that is fifty dollars per hour. Now instead of recreating our formula, I'm just going to right click on the one we have, copy it and then paste it into this row. As you can see, it's maintained its references so that ten is being multiplied by fifty instead of five being multiplied by five hundred. It maintains that per row. Now let's total up the amount for this quote. Total amount, we're just going right here in the beginning of the B column, let's add another equals and just say sum and then opening parantheses, let's select all the items in our quote. I just held my mouse down and selected those two totals. Let's do an end parantheses and there's the total value for this quote. My name's Dave Andrews and I've just showed you how to build a simple quoting system in Excel."