iPhone app for quickly adding up price quote

December 26, 2017 7:48 AM

I'm an undertaker and I'll frequently get calls asking for price estimates on a funeral or cremation. There are so many variables with each that I have to tabulate them all by hand. Is there an iPhone app that will set up a list with checkboxes that I can quickly tabulate a price? I've found apps that create invoices or price quotes, but it requires me to enter all the prices myself. Basically, I'm looking for the "McDonald's cash register" approach. Hit some buttons, it gives me a price. Is there an app like this?
posted by ColdChef to Work & Money (9 answers total)

Have you considered building a spreadsheet to do this?
posted by jon1270 at 8:20 AM on December 26, 2017 [5 favorites]

If you can’t find an app, you could set up a Google doc excel sheet with simple formulas. I.e., you’d had one column be all the possible items, a second for prices, a third for yes/no, and a fourth that is “If column C = yes, price from column B, otherwise, leave empty”. At the bottom is would automatically total column D. If you wanted to keep track of the quotes you give people, you could have a place for w Teri f the name and date and move that info over to a second tab when you’re back at a computer (I find using excel sheets easier from a computer than mobile) - but if you had a bunch of columns set up with the same formula, you could give a lot of quotes without having to erase a particular one.
posted by DoubleLune at 8:21 AM on December 26, 2017

Basically, I'm looking for the "McDonald's cash register" approach.

Look into the various credit card processing apps. Square POS, for example, lets you set up various products as buttons you press to add to the order. If you aren't actually charging a card, there wouldn't be any fees.
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 8:36 AM on December 26, 2017 [14 favorites]

Any accounting app (or CRM app, actually) that does "inventory management" or "inventory control" will do what you want (though not quite at the checkbox level but still pretty easy to do on the fly if you plan out your naming conventions), and I'm not sure what the smallest cheapest software that currently does that is but I can help you figure it out - depending on what accounting software you're already using and if it has a mobile interface, you might be able to do it from there. Quickbooks does, I know, and apparently Freshbooks has an inventory module now too. This does not require that you maintain stock levels in the software - anything classed as a "non-inventory" item won't need quantities on hand.

Accounting software is also more likely to let you easily create multiple quotes for one customer in case you're dealing with "okay but what if we X instead" scenarios and you'll be able to go back and see specifically what you said before about each scenario.

HMU if you want more info or help researching.
posted by Lyn Never at 8:37 AM on December 26, 2017

If the other options are unsatisfactory, you could create a web page (you don't even need a website if you download the file to your phone, I think) with the checkboxes and use javascript to create a total. This might sound hard, but this is pretty basic HTML and I think you could do it!
posted by flimflam at 8:57 AM on December 26, 2017

This might sound hard, but this is pretty basic HTML and I think you could do it!

Seconding this as a very reasonable option, and something you could throw on Jobs (and probably even find someone to crank it out while they're killing time over the holiday weekend). There's a few annoying considerations about where the website file lives and/or getting it to work locally, and how fancy should it look, and how easy is it to update, etc, but generally this is really easy and the sort of thing I personally would probably charge lowish 3-figures for depending on the answers to those questions.
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 9:06 AM on December 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

Do you need to keep records of the quotes? The square app definitely lets you set up checkboxes for different things you want to sell, but I don’t know if it will let you save the quote.
posted by leahwrenn at 9:23 AM on December 26, 2017

Nthing Square POS. It's easy to set up and will do exactly what you need. "One of these [tap], one of these [tap], two of those [tap] [tap], and the add-on package [tap]… comes to [total]. Or if we drop those [tap] and add this other [tap], it would be [new total]."
posted by Lexica at 9:45 AM on December 26, 2017 [3 favorites]

If you just want something simple, the Numbers app has a template called Checklist Total. Just make a new spreadsheet with that template and fill out the cost for various items/options. Then to get a quote, check the box next to each line item you want to count in the total. I hope that makes sense. You can check and uncheck things and the total updates automatically.

If you have a huge number of options, this might be cumbersome, but if it's like 20 things or less it should work pretty well.
posted by megafauna at 12:41 AM on December 27, 2017