For fabricators

Fabrication software that prices plate, cut, weld and finish separately

A fabricated part is four costs wearing one price. Roll them together and you overprice the simple work and lose money on everything complicated.

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Diagram titled "Fabrication cost buildup", showing the seven RFQ-to-order stages from enquiry intake through to accepted order.

In short

KanchanFlow is an RFQ-to-Order CRM for metal fabricators. It prices plate on nested yield rather than finished weight, holds cut length and pierce count as costed fields, separates weld fit-up from arc time, and carries outside finishing as a vendor line with a validity date rather than a percentage uplift.

A machine shop quote is dominated by machine time. A fabrication quote is four different arguments happening at once: how much plate you actually consume, how long the table takes, how long the fit-up and welding take, and what the finishing vendor charges this month.

Most fabrication quoting failures are the same failure — one of those four collapsed into a percentage of another. The percentage is right on average and wrong on every individual job, which is the worst possible property for a number that decides whether you take work.

Four cost centres

Each one costed on its own driver

The driver matters more than the rate. A cut priced as a percentage of material will be wrong on every thick-plate job you quote.

Plate: Nested yield; A 14-pound finished part cut from a nest that yields 61 percent costs you 23 pounds of plate. Pricing on finished weight loses the drop every single time.
Cut: Length + pierces; Cut length at a rate per inch for the material and thickness, plus pierce count, plus the load and unload. Not a percentage of material cost.
Weld: Inches deposited; Weld inches by process and position, wire or rod consumed, gas, plus fit-up and tacking time, which is usually longer than the welding itself.
Finish: Vendor line; Blast, prime, powder, galvanise, passivate. Priced per square foot or per piece with the vendor and their quoted price on the line.

Worked example

One bracket, 400 pieces, and the $3,420 in the drop

A 14.2 lb finished part in 3/8 inch A36, nested with the rest of the job at a measured 61 percent yield.

Line	Value	Where it comes from
Finished part weight	14.2 lb	What the drawing says
Nest yield on a 4 x 8 sheet	61%	Real for this part mix, measured not assumed
Plate consumed per part	23.3 lb	The number to price
Plate cost at $0.94/lb	$21.90	Against $13.35 if you priced finished weight
Difference per part	$8.55	On 400 pieces, $3,420 you were about to give away
Drop credit if you sell scrap	$0.19/lb	Recovered explicitly, not assumed into the rate

The point of the table is not that $8.55 is a large number. It is that the difference is invisible on a quote that prices material by finished weight, and it repeats on every job with an awkward nest.

Weld

Four things that make weld cost hard

Weld is the operation fabricators most often estimate from memory, and the one where memory is least reliable.

Fit-up dominates on a weldment — Tacking, squaring and fixturing routinely take two to four times the arc time. Costing weld by arc minutes alone underprices every assembly you quote.
Position changes the rate — Flat and horizontal are not overhead and vertical-up. Where a fabrication requires out-of-position welding, that is a different rate and a different deposition speed.

Consumables are a real line — Wire, gas and flux on a large weldment package add up to a number worth carrying explicitly rather than burying in burden.
Inspection where it is called — Visual, dye penetrant, magnetic particle or ultrasonic testing called on the print is an operation with a cost, and it is the line most often missed.

Freight and handling

Heavy, awkward, and quotable

Fabrications are heavy and awkward, so freight is a quotable line rather than an afterthought
Crating and skidding on a large weldment is real labour and real material
Truck versus LTL changes with the finished envelope, not just the weight
Delivery to a job site with no dock is a different cost from delivery to a plant
Where the customer collects, the term needs recording so it is not re-argued at dispatch

Fabrication is the one shop type where freight regularly moves a quote from profitable to marginal. A weldment that ships on a flatbed with an oversize permit is not a UPS problem, and the cost belongs on the quote as a line the customer can see and question rather than inside an overhead rate they cannot.

The freight helper on Professional holds carrier options and rates against the finished envelope and weight, which is enough to quote credibly. It is not a transport management system and it does not book a truck.

Honesty

When we are the wrong choice for a fab shop

You need nesting and CAM — we do not nest, and your nesting software will always beat a CRM at estimating yield
Your work is pure flat laser cutting from customer DXFs at volume — a geometry-based instant quoting tool is a better fit for that narrow, well-characterised process
You need production scheduling across a cutting table, press brakes and weld bays — that is a shop ERP
You are a structural steel fabricator quoting off tonnage with a detailing package driving everything — the detailing software owns your estimate, not us
You want the software to read a weld symbol off a print and calculate deposition — we do not interpret drawings and will not claim to

What this is not

This is not an ERP, MRP, CAD, BOM, or advanced CPQ system — it manages customer RFQs, quotes, follow-ups, and order handoff.

Questions fabricators ask

Because the markup that makes finished weight work for one part is wrong for the next one. A simple rectangular bracket might nest at 82 percent; a curved gusset with internal cutouts might nest at 48. A single material markup averages those, which means you overprice the easy parts and lose the hard ones. Carrying yield explicitly per part takes a minute in the buildup and it is the difference between quoting fabrication and guessing it.

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