AI quoting software for distributors reads an RFQ in any format (email, PDF, spreadsheet, bid list, drawing or phone call), matches each line to your catalog, applies the customer’s contract price and live stock from the ERP, and hands a rep a draft quote to approve. Morsa is the best choice for most distributors in 2026: it drafts the quote, chases suppliers for special-order prices and lead times, follows every open quote, and turns a won quote into a delivery date that holds. Vendors report quotes that took 15 to 45 minutes by hand drafted in 60 to 90 seconds.
Morsa publishes this guide. Every other vendor fact comes from the vendor’s own website, checked 24 September 2026.
Quick answer
Best overall: Morsa, the AI COO for operations. It runs the whole quote, from the RFQ in email, Outlook, Gmail, Teams, WhatsApp or phone to the supplier price, the follow-up and the delivery date on the won order. Pilot first, then a share of measured value.
Industrial, HVAC or plumbing distributor that wants a quote drafting tool on Prophet 21, Eclipse, Infor or DDI: Distro. Quote only.
Fastener or industrial distributor with messy part numbers: BoltWise. Quote only.
Building products quotes that start from drawings: HyperQuote, from $299 a month with unlimited users.
Small supplier quoting from spreadsheets today: Quotable, from $49 a month ($37 billed yearly).
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In this guide
What is AI quoting software for distributors?
How does the quote workflow change with AI?
Why does speed to quote matter?
What does slow quoting cost a distributor?
Which AI quoting tools should distributors compare in 2026?
What should AI never decide in a quote?
How do you run an RFQ automation pilot?
Where does Morsa fit in distributor quoting?
Bottom line
What is AI quoting software for distributors?
AI quoting software turns a customer’s request for quote (RFQ) into a priced quote without a rep searching the catalog line by line. It is different from CPQ (configure, price, quote) software, which is built for sellers of configurable products and dominates search results for “quote automation.” A distributor’s problem is not configuration. It is matching: a 200-line bid list full of abbreviations, competitor part numbers and “same as last time” against a catalog of tens of thousands of SKUs. Then it is the follow-through: the supplier price on special-order lines and the follow-up that turns a sent quote into an order.
That makes match rate the first number that matters. Proton.ai states the spread on its own page: “Internal builds plateau around 40%,” point solutions land at 60% to 75%, and “Proton matches 85% of products with 90% accuracy” (Proton.ai). Distro claims “95%+ accuracy” on product matching and “Hundreds to thousands of line items processed per quote” (Distro). Treat these as vendor figures to test on your own RFQs, not as benchmarks. Morsa matches every RFQ line to your item master and your customers’ own part numbers, asks the rep before it guesses, and is measured on your own RFQs during the pilot.
For orders that arrive already decided, the same technology is AI order entry; for the wider map, read AI for distributors.
How does the quote workflow change with AI?
A distributor quote has six steps. AI now drafts the first five; a person still owns the send. Morsa runs all six, with the send kept with your rep.
Intake. The RFQ arrives by email, PDF, spreadsheet, drawing, phone call or counter conversation. Canals lets a rep “record the live audio and a quote is created as the conversation happens.” Morsa reads the RFQ in whichever channel it arrives.
Identify. Customer, branch, job and ship-to, from the email signature or the account.
Match. Each line to a SKU and unit of measure, with cross-references and ranked alternates where a line is ambiguous.
Price and check stock. Contract price, price matrix and margin floor from the ERP; stock across branches; supplier price and lead time for non-stock items. Morsa chases the supplier for the non-stock price and lead time.
Review. Low-confidence lines are flagged for a rep. At ChannelFlex, “Every line gets a confidence score”; high-confidence lines pass through.
Send and follow up. The rep approves, the quote goes out, and someone has to chase it until it becomes an order or a loss. Morsa does that chasing.
Step 4 for special orders and step 6 get the least space on vendor pages. Ventura promises to “Request supplier pricing, availability, and lead times” for special orders (Ventura), and Proton.ai “reminds reps when to re-engage” on open quotes. Most of the others stop at the draft. Morsa is built for exactly these two steps.
One RFQ, six steps
Where AI drafts the quote and where a person still decides
Step 01
Intake
An RFQ arrives by email, PDF, spreadsheet, drawing or phone call.
AI
Read in any format
Step 02
Identify
Customer, branch, job and ship-to are found from the message and the account.
AI
Checked against the ERP
Step 03
Match
Each line is matched to a SKU and unit, with ranked alternates when a line is unclear.
AI
Confidence score per line
Step 04
Price
Contract price, margin floor and stock come from the ERP; non-stock lines need a supplier price.
AI plus rules
Rules decide, the model does not
Step 05
Review
A rep checks flagged lines and anything below the margin floor.
Person
Approval stays human
Step 06
Follow up
The quote is chased until it becomes an order or a documented loss.
Morsa
Where quotes used to go quiet
Illustrative workflow. Step names are ours; capabilities are from vendor sites, 24 September 2026.
Why does speed to quote matter?
Most sellers answer slowly, and slow answers lose. The best public evidence is older and about sales leads, not distributor quotes, so read it as a direction, not an exact effect. In a study published in Harvard Business Review in March 2011, James Oldroyd, Kristina McElheran and David Elkington audited 2,241 US companies: 37% responded to a web lead within an hour, 23% never responded, and the average response time among those that answered within 30 days was 42 hours. Across 1.25 million leads at 42 companies, firms that tried to contact a lead within an hour were “nearly seven times as likely to qualify the lead” as those that waited even an hour longer, and more than 60 times as likely as those that waited 24 hours or more. Their conclusion: “Companies are making big investments in order to obtain customer queries from the internet, and they should be responding at internet speed” (Harvard Business Review, March 2011).
Distributor evidence comes from vendors’ own customer stories, so it is one account each. Canals says one customer’s hit rate rose “from 20% on average to 57% for orders processed through Canals, a nearly 2.8X increase.” A customer quoted on Mercura’s site says: “Due to capacity constraints, we previously handled ~70% of incoming requests. We now handle 100% while improving customer satisfaction through faster quotes.”
What does slow quoting cost a distributor?
Illustrative calculation, not a Morsa result. Replace every input with your own numbers.
Inputs
Volume: 40 RFQs a day, 250 working days, so 10,000 a year (an example distributor).
Time to quote by hand: 15 minutes, the manual time Proton.ai publishes for one emailed request (“15 min → 60 secs”).
Loaded cost per hour: $49.51. The median wage for wholesale and manufacturing sales representatives (except technical and scientific products) was $72,080 in May 2025 (BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook), or $34.65 an hour over 2,080 hours. Wages are 70.0% of private-industry compensation (BLS, June 2026), so $34.65 divided by 0.70 is $49.51.
With AI: 2 minutes of rep review per drafted quote (Proton says 60 seconds and Distro 90 seconds; we round up).
Revenue side: an average quote of $2,000 (assumption) and a 20% hit rate (the average the Canals customer above started from).
Result
Rep time by hand: 10,000 x 15 minutes is 2,500 hours a year, or $123,764.
Rep time with AI: 333 hours a year, or $16,502. About 2,167 hours, or $107,262, go back to selling.
Unanswered requests: if your team answers 70% of RFQs today, as the Mercura customer did, the 3,000 unanswered requests a year are worth 3,000 x 20% x $2,000 = $1.2 million in orders.
Hit rate: each point of hit rate across 10,000 quotes is 100 orders, or $200,000 a year.
The revenue lines are orders, not profit; apply your own gross margin. The time saving is real but small next to them. The money in quoting is in answering every request, fast, and following every quote to an order, which is the part Morsa runs.
How can a small distributor quote faster without hiring more inside sales people?
A small distributor quotes faster without new hires by taking the legwork out of the quoting process, not by asking reps to type faster. Stock lines get priced straight from the ERP, supplier price and availability requests for non-stock lines go out the minute the RFQ arrives, and the rep’s time goes to substitutes, margin and the send. Speed is said to matter a great deal: Distribution Strategy Group repeats a claim from unnamed technology providers that “distributors lose over 40% of potential wins when quotes take longer than 24 hours to deliver.” No sample or date is given, so treat it as a vendor figure.
Brian Hopkins of Distribution Strategy Group, who built a quote and sourcing team in distribution, wrote that some complex quotes on his manual process “still took us up to eight hours to get back to a customer,” and that he watched talented people spend “80% of their time hunting through systems, validating data, and manually assembling quotes” (Distribution Strategy Group, July 2025). That is one leader’s experience, not a survey. Part of that time is what automation can take back; how much depends on how clean your ERP data is and how many lines are special orders.
What is the quoting process, and where does the time go?
The distributor quoting process has six steps: read the RFQ, find each item, price it, check availability, get supplier prices for anything not in stock, then send and follow up. On an emailed RFQ, much of the rep’s time goes to retyping lines from a PDF or spreadsheet, looking up the customer’s part numbers, checking stock branch by branch, and waiting on a supplier’s price and lead time for the special-order lines that hold up the whole quote. Distribution Strategy Group’s 2017 inside sales survey found that “the reactive activities such as quoting and order entry still take the largest amount of time” for inside sales teams.
Step | Where the time goes by hand | How to cut it |
|---|---|---|
Read and match | Retyping lines, looking up customer part numbers | Quoting software reads the PDF or spreadsheet and matches each line |
Price and availability | Contract price, matrix, stock at each branch | Pulled from the ERP, if the ERP holds them accurately |
Non-stock lines | Calling or emailing suppliers, then waiting | A rule this week: request supplier prices at intake, not at the end |
Substitutes | Finding an equivalent when an item is short | A rule this week: write which items may be swapped and by whom |
Send and follow up | Typing the quote; chasing it days later | A rule this week: every open quote gets a call on day two |
Quoting software for distributors: how to move toward same-day quotes
Five changes can move a small distributor toward same-day quotes with the reps it already has. Changes 1 and 2 work best with software and an ERP that holds contract prices and stock accurately; changes 3, 4 and 5 are rules you can write this week and run by hand.
Price stock lines automatically. If the ERP already holds the contract price and the stock, a person should not be looking them up. The rep reviews the lines the system flags.
Send supplier requests at intake. A special-order line is often what makes a quote late. Requesting the supplier’s price and lead time at 8:00, rather than after the rest of the quote is built at 3:00, gives the supplier the whole day to answer.
Set substitute rules once. Decide which items can be swapped automatically, which need the rep’s yes, and which never change because the spec is tight.
Triage by size. Short RFQs from regular customers go out within hours; long bid lists get a same-day acknowledgment with a promised date.
Follow up on day two. A quote nobody chases can quietly go to the competitor who called back.
Here is how that runs with Morsa on a Monday. At 8:00 an RFQ lands in a rep’s own mailbox. By 8:05 Morsa has matched every line to your item master and the customer’s own part numbers, and sent price and lead time requests for the two special-order lines to their suppliers. By 8:30 the stock lines are priced against your ERP, with substitutes proposed within your rules. When the suppliers reply, Morsa reads the prices into the draft, and the rep checks the flagged lines and sends the quote. On Wednesday, Morsa reminds the rep about the open quote. To see it on last week’s RFQs, book a demo.
Do small businesses need quoting software?
A small distributor does not need quoting software while its reps answer every RFQ the same day with a template and the ERP; our free quote template and calculator is enough at that size. It needs quoting software once quotes start waiting: when RFQs sit overnight, when special-order lines take days, or when reps stop answering the small requests because the big ones eat the day.
Which AI quoting tools should distributors compare in 2026?
Twelve tools: Morsa first, then eleven ordered by how many distributor situations each fits. We read every other vendor’s facts and prices on the vendor’s own site on 24 September 2026; where no price is published, the entry says “quote only.” For a wider field, including AP and purchasing agents, see the best AI agents for distributors in 2026.
1. Morsa
Quick overview: Morsa is the AI COO for operations, for manufacturers and distributors. For quoting, Morsa runs the whole quote: it reads the RFQ in the channel it arrived in (email, Outlook, Gmail, Teams, WhatsApp, phone or whatever your team uses), drafts the quote against your ERP’s prices and stock, chases suppliers for special-order prices and lead times, follows up every open quote, and turns a won quote into a delivery date that holds. It decides only within the price, margin and substitution rules you approve, and it learns your customers, people and procedures as it runs.
Best for: Mid-market and enterprise distributors that want quotes drafted, priced, followed up and delivered by one system, especially where quotes stall on supplier answers and follow-up.
Pros: Covers all six quote steps, including the supplier price on special orders and the follow-up that most tools leave out. Works inside your existing channels, so nobody learns new software. Morsa matches every RFQ line to your catalog, reads drawings, pulls past jobs and prices, requests supplier quotes and reads the replies, computes landed cost and drafts the quote in your own format. It connects to Prophet 21, Eclipse, Infor, SAP Business One, Dynamics 365 including Business Central, NetSuite, Odoo, Zoho, QuickBooks, Excel and Google Sheets, and to more than one ERP at once. Cloud, private cloud or fully on-premise, including the AI models. Onboarding in days: J4S, a 120-person glass plant, went live in two days with no new software, and on-time completion went from about 30% to about 75% in four weeks. At JRG Automotive it caught 5 of 8 production-stopping shortages early and saved $2 million.
Cons: No public price list; pilot first. Starts with a pilot on one live problem, not a self-serve trial.
Pricing: A pilot on one live problem first, free when no implementation work is needed; otherwise a minimal implementation cost, refunded if the pilot shows no value. The fee is a share of the value created, agreed after the pilot.
Economics: no per-seat licences, no multi-month implementation, and no new software or training cost. A pilot on one live problem comes first, and the fee after it is a share of the value proven in your own numbers, which makes Morsa cheaper and lower-risk than per-seat software and long implementations.
Source: J4S customer story and Morsa pricing
2. Distro
Quick overview: “100+ Lines Quoted in Minutes.” Distro reads RFQs from PDF, Excel, email, images and handwriting, matches products with “95%+ accuracy,” applies “Customer-specific pricing and contract enforcement,” and syncs with “Prophet 21, Eclipse, Infor, DDI and more.” Its page says: “What used to take 45 minutes now takes 90 seconds.”
Best for: Industrial, HVAC and plumbing distributors on distribution ERPs.
Pros: Built around industrial distribution, and it suggests substitute and complementary products.
Cons: No price published.
Pricing: Quote only.
Source: distro.app
3. Proton.ai Order and Quote Entry
Quick overview: Turns “any inbound request into a ready-to-send quote or order,” with “90% Match rate accuracy across thousands of SKUs,” on the same platform as Proton’s CRM, PIM and ecommerce. It integrates with Epicor Prophet 21 and Eclipse, Infor SX.e, SAP S/4HANA and ECC, NetSuite and IBM AS/400.
Best for: Distributors that want quoting, CRM and ecommerce on one data set.
Pros: Published match-rate figures, an ERP list that reaches back to IBM AS/400, and follow-up reminders on open quotes.
Cons: A platform purchase, not a point tool.
Pricing: Quote only.
Source: proton.ai
4. Canals
Quick overview: Quotes and orders from email, phone and in person, where a rep can “record the live audio and a quote is created as the conversation happens.” It integrates with Eclipse, Prophet 21, Infor CSD, Infor SX.e, SAP S/4HANA and Microsoft Dynamics, and reports the 2.8x hit-rate case above.
Best for: Electrical and building supply distributors with busy counters and phones.
Pros: Voice quoting at the counter and in the field.
Cons: Quoting is one product in a wider suite; buy what you need.
Pricing: Quote only; “a tiered, usage-based pricing model.”
Source: canals.ai
5. BoltWise
Quick overview: “Return quotes 3-4x faster with AI-powered part matching.” BoltWise covers “1,000+ types of fasteners and 2,000+ types of other industrial goods,” cleans the catalog in week one, and integrates with Epicor Prophet 21, INxSQL, Infor CloudSuite Distribution and The Business Edge.
Best for: Fastener, MRO and industrial distributors.
Pros: Catalog cleanup is part of setup; a three-week rollout plan on its site.
Cons: Narrow by design; four ERPs named.
Pricing: Quote only.
Source: getboltwise.com
6. Ventura
Quick overview: AI quoting, order entry, takeoffs, order status and special orders for distributors and manufacturers, on Agility, Prophet 21, Eclipse, BisTrack, Business Central, Infor, NetSuite and SAP. “Customers typically go live in under three weeks,” and “Ventura has completed a SOC 2 Type II audit.” Ted Dometita, CFO of Richards Building Supply, is quoted: “We saw huge potential to reallocate sales capacity toward higher-value work.”
Best for: Building products and industrial distributors that want special-order supplier requests handled too.
Pros: Covers supplier pricing and lead-time requests for special orders.
Cons: Few published results beyond its customer quote.
Pricing: Quote only.
Source: ventura.ai
7. Mercura
Quick overview: AI quote and order automation for distributors and manufacturers, with “Voice Agents” that “provide real-time quotes,” spec and tender reading, and SAP and Oracle integration. Mercura says “60+ distributors and manufacturers trust Mercura” and lists “Y Combinator Batch W25”; servers are ISO/IEC 27001 certified and hosted in Europe.
Best for: European distributors quoting from specifications and tenders.
Pros: Tender and spec reading; margin-aware product suggestions.
Cons: Europe-first; check your ERP beyond SAP and Oracle.
Pricing: Quote only.
Source: mercura.ai
8. WizCommerce
Quick overview: An AI Order and Quote Entry Assistant that “Reads RFQs and POs from emails, PDFs, scans, voice messages, and handwritten documents,” flags missing fields and wrong prices, and creates ERP-ready orders through “1,000+ pre-built connectors.”
Best for: Wholesalers that sell through B2B ecommerce and reps.
Pros: Quoting sits inside a B2B ordering platform.
Cons: Less focused on large industrial bid lists.
Pricing: Quote only.
Source: wizcommerce.com
9. ChannelFlex
Quick overview: Reads inbound RFQs, matches “every line item to your catalog across all your vendor lines,” and scores each one: “Every line gets a confidence score.” It works alongside “NetSuite, SAP, Epicor, Infor, Sage, Salesforce and more,” with “real RFQs processed within two to four weeks of starting.”
Best for: Distributors quoting across many vendor lines.
Pros: Per-line confidence scores; RFQs and POs in one inbox.
Cons: Few published customer figures.
Pricing: Quote only.
Source: channelflex.com
10. Avent
Quick overview: An “AI Workforce for Distribution” that runs quote-to-cash on defined rules, AI and human approval. In its sample permissions, “The sales manager can approve quotes; the quoting agent cannot approve in this example.” It is SOC 2 compliant.
Best for: Distributors that want explicit approval rules around AI.
Pros: Workflows and permissions you can see and edit.
Cons: Few published customer results.
Pricing: Quote only.
Source: aventindustrial.com
11. HyperQuote
Quick overview: AI takeoffs and quoting for building product distributors: HVAC/R and plumbing drawings turned into bills of materials. It claims “90%+ Reduction in Takeoff Time” and “97%+ Equipment Tag Detection Accuracy,” with “Unlimited users and a 30-day free trial on every tier.”
Best for: HVAC/R and plumbing distributors that quote from drawing sets.
Pros: Published prices and a free trial.
Cons: Priced by pages processed; built for takeoffs, not emailed line lists.
Pricing: Starter $299 a month (200 pages), Team $599 (600 pages), Business $1,499 (2,000 pages), billed monthly; Enterprise custom.
Source: hyperquote.io/pricing
12. Quotable
Quick overview: Quoting, orders and payments for small suppliers, “Trusted by 400+ B2B teams across 30 countries.” The Pro Seller plan adds a “Universal AI/OCR Parser System”; Advanced Seller adds SAP, NetSuite, Oracle and Microsoft integrations.
Best for: Small distributors moving quotes out of spreadsheets.
Pros: The lowest published price here, with a free start.
Cons: Order caps (30, 100 or 500 a month) and lighter catalog matching than the distributor specialists.
Pricing: Starter $49 a month, Pro Seller $99, Advanced Seller $249; or $37, $74 and $187 a month billed yearly.
Source: getquotable.ai/pricing
Summary
Tool | Best for | Pricing (24 Sep 2026) |
|---|---|---|
Morsa | The whole quote: draft, supplier price, follow-up, delivery date | Pilot first; then a share of measured value; no public price |
Distro | Industrial, HVAC, plumbing on P21, Eclipse, Infor, DDI | Quote only |
Proton.ai | Quoting plus CRM and ecommerce | Quote only |
Canals | Counter and phone quoting | Quote only (usage-based) |
BoltWise | Fasteners and MRO | Quote only |
Ventura | Special orders and building products | Quote only |
Mercura | European specs and tenders | Quote only |
WizCommerce | B2B ecommerce wholesalers | Quote only |
ChannelFlex | Many vendor lines | Quote only |
Avent | Explicit approval rules | Quote only |
HyperQuote | Takeoffs from drawings | $299 to $1,499 a month |
Quotable | Small suppliers | $37 to $249 a month |
Turian and Conexiom also read quote requests alongside orders; both are quote only and covered in our AI order entry guide.
What should AI never decide in a quote?
Price, credit and substitutions belong to rules, not to the model. Brian Hopkins, Chief Operations Officer of Distribution Strategy Group and a former Grainger service center operations leader, put it this way: “Pricing, margin floors, credit limits, and product substitution are business rules. They must return the same answer every time, no matter which agent asks or how the question gets phrased.” And: “An agent is strong at conversation and context. It is a poor place to store your margin policy” (Distribution Strategy Group, 22 September 2026). Morsa follows this rule: price, margin and substitution decisions come from your ERP and the rules you approve.
In practice:
Price comes from the ERP’s pricing engine. A quote below the margin floor goes to a manager.
Substitutions on spec-sensitive items go to a person. Hopkins: a wrong substitute “is not a rounding error. It is a failed job and a lost customer.”
New accounts and credit terms never open from a quote.
The send stays with a rep until your measured accuracy earns a change, line type by line type.
Ask every vendor to show the approval rule in the product, the way Avent’s sample permissions show a quoting agent that cannot approve. In Morsa, the approval rules are set in the Configure step, before anything goes live.
How do you run an RFQ automation pilot?
Run the pilot on quotes you already know the answer to. Morsa’s pilot runs on one live problem, such as your slowest special-order quotes.
Pull 100 closed RFQs from the last six months, won and lost, across your messiest customers.
Clean the catalog first. BoltWise starts every rollout with a week of catalog refinement. Matching cannot beat your item data.
Score first-pass match per line, then the share of quotes sent with no edits. Compare against the vendor’s claim.
Time each quote from RFQ received to quote sent, before and after.
Run two to four weeks in shadow mode, with the AI drafting and reps sending as usual. Shadow is an optional step in every Morsa onboarding.
Track hit rate by quote age so you see whether faster quotes win more in your trade.
Stated go-lives on vendor sites are two weeks at Canals, under three weeks at Ventura, three weeks at BoltWise and two to four weeks at ChannelFlex. Morsa went live at J4S in two days. A one-month pilot fits all of them.
Where does Morsa fit in distributor quoting?
At the center. Morsa runs the quote from the RFQ to the delivered order: it drafts the quote against your ERP, and it runs what happens around the quote, which is where a fast quote still loses. That means the special-order line that waits three days for a supplier’s price, the quote that went out Tuesday and was never followed up, and the won quote whose ship date slips because a vendor pushed a PO. Those are coordination problems across people and suppliers, and Morsa is built to close them.
The results are measured. At J4S, a 120-person glass manufacturing plant, on-time completion of operational commitments went from about 30% to about 75% across about 900 commitments in the first four weeks. Morsa went live there in two days, with no new software, no migration and no training. Anil Kohli, Production Head at J4S: “Our people don’t have to learn any new software. People just message the way they always have. Morsa coordinates all the messages in the background.” At JRG Automotive, Morsa identified 5 of 8 production-stopping material shortages early enough to act and saved $2 million (pricing). Read the J4S story.
Morsa connects to any system with an API, a database, an export or an email trail, whether that is your distribution ERP (Prophet 21, Eclipse, Infor CSD, Acumatica and the rest) or a shared quote log. If you are still choosing that ERP, start with our distribution management software guide. A pilot on one live problem comes first (how pricing works).
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Bottom line
Pick Morsa if you want one system that drafts the quote, gets the supplier’s price, follows every open quote and keeps the delivery date on the won order. If you only want a drafting tool, Distro fits industrial, HVAC and plumbing distributors on distribution ERPs; Proton.ai fits those that want quoting, CRM and ecommerce on one platform; Canals fits counter and phone quoting; BoltWise fits fasteners; Ventura covers special orders; HyperQuote ($299 to $1,499 a month) fits takeoffs from drawings; Quotable ($37 to $249 a month) fits small suppliers. Keep price, credit and substitutions in rules, and keep the send with a rep until the numbers say otherwise. The larger money is in answering every request and following every quote to an order, which is the work Morsa runs.
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Free tools for the same work: the quote template and calculator, the RFQ template for asking suppliers, and the bid comparison template for lining up their prices.
Quoting machined or fabricated parts from a customer’s drawing is a different job from matching catalog lines; manufacturing quoting software compares the tools job shops and fabricators use, with prices.
To compare distributor quoting tools with AI quoting tools built for job shops and fabricators, see best AI quoting software.
Sources
Distro quoting and order entry, 24 September 2026
Proton.ai Order and Quote Entry, 24 September 2026
Canals order entry and quoting, 24 September 2026
BoltWise and ERP integrations, 24 September 2026
Ventura, Mercura, WizCommerce, ChannelFlex, Avent, 24 September 2026
HyperQuote pricing and Quotable pricing, 24 September 2026
Debbie Paul, “Inside Sales in 2017: Survey Results”, Distribution Strategy Group, 22 April 2017
Changelog
2 November 2026: Added a section on quoting faster without hiring more inside sales people, with the quoting process step by step and five changes toward same-day quotes; two FAQ rows added.
15 October 2026: Morsa now ranks first of twelve tools and leads the quick answer, the workflow steps, the summary table and the bottom line. Morsa is described as the AI COO for operations, its entry covers drafting, supplier prices, follow-up and delivery dates, the JRG Automotive result is added, and the FAQ is updated to match.
24 September 2026: Morsa’s entry now names mid-market and enterprise distributors. Morsa is now described as the AI that operates the factory for you, and its entry, section and FAQ say what Morsa runs rather than what it builds.
24 September 2026: Published. Eleven quoting tools plus Morsa, every vendor fact and price read on the vendor’s own site on 24 September 2026; labor inputs from BLS releases of May 2025 and June 2026.
