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As I have mentioned before, I work for a furniture manufacturer. We are renovating so we moved into temporary offices while they gut the existing offices. We are getting all new offices, so they sold off the existing furniture. Someone from marketing (I’ll call him Bass) sold one of the desks to a company across the street. All is well ad good with the world. Then, Bass gets a call from the company and they want to but a piece of desk top that they can add to their station to make it into an L shape desk.
No big deal, except the piece is custom, and without any engineering or overhead costs, the finished material price is approx $100 per square foot. Engineering costs and CNC programming charges put the overhead price at just over $1000. With a 30”x84” surface that they want, that makes the overall retail price about $2750. The wholesale cost is $1237.
So, Bass comes to me and says “I told the customer that it was going to be about $700. Can you write a quote for that?” I informed him that HE could write a quote for that, but that if I wrote a quote it would be correct at the wholesale price of $1237, and told him that I am not going to cover his butt because he screwed up and told the customer something that was wrong, AND that I am not going to let the company eat his screw up. The next day he told me that his boss wants a quote from us to make the ordering process legit. I wrote him a quote for $1237. He came back and complained that he already has a PO for $700 from the customer. The quote must match the PO.
(insert little flashback wavy screen here while I digress to a different but soon to be related topic)
We have a cool system here for budgeting. Each department has to write a budget proposal at the beginning of the year. It gets approved, money gets designated for each department. If department 1 does something that costs department 2 money, then department 2 can issue an invoice to department 1 for that amount, and the money is re-designated into department 2’s budget.
(wavy flashback screen returning to the present)
I wrote a quote for $700, with the an add on line “pending approval of invoice #12345”. Then I attached an inter-departmental invoice (#12345) billing marketing $537 to Special Manufacturing for “creation of Special worksurface”. I e-mailed the quote and the invoice to Bass in marketing, and his boss.
That all happened last week. I waited to see what happened, so I didn’t have to post an update.
I got an e-mail this morning that went to a majority of the office staff from the head of Marketing
“When dealing with a customer, if they request a product that is not standard, forward the request to the quote department. Should it be found that you quoted a product to the customer a price for a special product without a quote, you may receive an inter-departmental invoice for the difference. This is being done because only the quote department is qualified to estimate prices, and we don’t want the company to suffer at the hands of an un-qualified person making a quote. For any questions contact Bob or Bass.”
I then got back the signed invoice from marketing.
Some things just make me smile.
No big deal, except the piece is custom, and without any engineering or overhead costs, the finished material price is approx $100 per square foot. Engineering costs and CNC programming charges put the overhead price at just over $1000. With a 30”x84” surface that they want, that makes the overall retail price about $2750. The wholesale cost is $1237.
So, Bass comes to me and says “I told the customer that it was going to be about $700. Can you write a quote for that?” I informed him that HE could write a quote for that, but that if I wrote a quote it would be correct at the wholesale price of $1237, and told him that I am not going to cover his butt because he screwed up and told the customer something that was wrong, AND that I am not going to let the company eat his screw up. The next day he told me that his boss wants a quote from us to make the ordering process legit. I wrote him a quote for $1237. He came back and complained that he already has a PO for $700 from the customer. The quote must match the PO.
(insert little flashback wavy screen here while I digress to a different but soon to be related topic)
We have a cool system here for budgeting. Each department has to write a budget proposal at the beginning of the year. It gets approved, money gets designated for each department. If department 1 does something that costs department 2 money, then department 2 can issue an invoice to department 1 for that amount, and the money is re-designated into department 2’s budget.
(wavy flashback screen returning to the present)
I wrote a quote for $700, with the an add on line “pending approval of invoice #12345”. Then I attached an inter-departmental invoice (#12345) billing marketing $537 to Special Manufacturing for “creation of Special worksurface”. I e-mailed the quote and the invoice to Bass in marketing, and his boss.
That all happened last week. I waited to see what happened, so I didn’t have to post an update.
I got an e-mail this morning that went to a majority of the office staff from the head of Marketing
“When dealing with a customer, if they request a product that is not standard, forward the request to the quote department. Should it be found that you quoted a product to the customer a price for a special product without a quote, you may receive an inter-departmental invoice for the difference. This is being done because only the quote department is qualified to estimate prices, and we don’t want the company to suffer at the hands of an un-qualified person making a quote. For any questions contact Bob or Bass.”
I then got back the signed invoice from marketing.
Some things just make me smile.
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