ShopQuote Flow is a free collection of practical quoting tools for machine shops, CNC job shops, owners, and estimators. It is designed for the everyday work behind a quote: estimating a realistic shop rate, separating setup time from run time, understanding how quantity changes unit cost, and turning those inputs into a quote that can be reviewed and shared.
The first resource is a free Excel machine shop quote template. It gives estimators a familiar spreadsheet structure for organizing customer and job information, material, operations, labor, overhead, markup, and pricing. Shops can download it and adapt it to their own process instead of starting from a blank workbook. The template is especially useful for small teams that need a consistent quoting format before they are ready to adopt a larger software system.
ShopQuote Flow also includes a Machine Shop Hourly Rate Calculator. It helps users think through the cost of running a machine and the rate needed to cover labor, overhead, utilization, and profit. The calculator is intended as a transparent starting point: users can change the assumptions, see how the result moves, and compare the output with their current shop rate.
A second calculator focuses on setup time, run time, and quantity. This matters because the same setup cost is spread across a different number of parts as order quantity changes. Estimators can use the tool to explore quantity breaks and explain why the per-part price changes between a prototype, a short run, and a larger order. The calculation is visible and easy to review, which makes it useful for training as well as day-to-day estimating.
The site also includes a detailed guide to machine shop quoting software. The guide explains the core parts of a quoting workflow and the tradeoffs between spreadsheets, standalone calculators, and dedicated systems. It is written for people evaluating how to improve quoting without assuming that every shop needs the same process.
All public tools and resources can be used in a browser without creating an account. ShopQuote Flow does not replace an estimator's judgment or a shop's own cost data. Instead, it provides a clear, accessible framework that helps teams ask better questions, document assumptions, and build more consistent quotes. The project is a useful starting point for new estimators, shop owners reviewing their pricing approach, and experienced teams that want simple calculators they can share internally. Teams can revisit the tools whenever costs, utilization, or order quantities change, making the resources useful for ongoing process improvement.
