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PandaDoc Quote Builder: What It Does and When to Use It Over Pricing Tables

Pure Proposals
PandaDoc Quote Builder: What It Does and When to Use It Over Pricing Tables

PandaDoc Quote Builder is a dedicated quoting block, available on Business and Enterprise plans, that builds structured multi-section quotes from your product catalog: bundles, optional items the client can select, editable quantities, discount and tax columns, cost and margin visibility, and recurring billing with a contract term. It is the block PandaDoc is actively upgrading the classic pricing table into, and the right choice whenever a quote has options, packages, or margins a rep needs to see before sending.

That answer hides a real decision, because most PandaDoc accounts already run on pricing-table templates that work fine. This guide covers what the quote builder block actually does, where it beats the pricing table, and how to send multi-option quotes from one template instead of maintaining three. Pricing complexity and the fear of quoting errors came up in 28 of the 129 sales calls we analysed, and the quote builder exists to put that complexity into a governed block instead of a rep’s head.

Key takeaways

  • Quote Builder is gated to PandaDoc Business and Enterprise plans, and only account owners, Admins and Managers can add the block to a template. Members work inside what Admins set up.
  • It is section-based: one quote block holds multiple named sections with their own subtotals, footers and recipient selection rules, which is how one template serves Good, Better, Best quotes.
  • Recipient options are the headline feature: optional items, client-editable quantities, and single-item, multiple-item or section-level selection, with the total recalculating as the client chooses.
  • The Cost column plus the profit margin view show total cost, profit and margin for the block and the document before anything is sent. The classic pricing table handles margins separately.
  • Product data flows in from Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive, Zoho CRM and Microsoft Dynamics when the integration is enabled, so quotes start from deal line items rather than retyping.
  • Keep using the classic pricing table for simple, fixed line-item documents; move to Quote Builder when quotes carry options, bundles, recurring terms or margin review. PandaDoc is upgrading pricing tables toward Quote Builder, so new complex builds belong on the new block.

What the quote builder block is and how it works

Quote Builder is a content block you insert into a template or document, the same way you would a pricing table: the quick-add line between blocks or Insert, then Quote builder. Selecting the block and choosing Full screen opens a dedicated editor where the real configuration happens; accounts with the simplified inline experience can also manage rows, sections and recipient permissions directly on the document, with design and column locking still living in the full-screen editor.

Inside the block, quotes are built from three layers:

  • Products. Pulled from the catalog with search across name, SKU, description, custom fields and category, or created as custom products in the block. Every product in one block shares a currency, and PandaDoc recommends keeping a block under 100 products, with a hard limit of 500.
  • Sections. Named groups of products with their own footers. A section footer can show quantity, one-time and recurring subtotals, discount, tax and fee lines on top of the default section total, and a grand total footer sums the document, including a “You’ll save” line that totals the discounts applied.
  • Columns. Price, Quantity and Total by default, plus add-on columns: Discount, Tax, Fee, Multiplier, Contract Term, Savings, Price per Item, SKU, Cost, and text, number, currency or custom columns. Any column except the title can be hidden from the recipient, and the Lock column control stops Member-role users editing values or restructuring a column an Admin has set.

The principle from our PandaDoc pricing tables guide carries over exactly: the quote is structured data, not formatted text, so it can calculate, obey rules and sync with other systems. Quote Builder just carries much more structure: sections, bundles, recipient selection and cost data are native concepts rather than workarounds.

Quote builder vs pricing table: how to choose

The classic pricing table is one table of rows: items, quantities, prices, a discount or tax column, section groupings, done. It remains the right block for a large share of documents, and PandaDoc keeps it fully supported. The practical decision rule:

Stay on the pricing table when the quote is a fixed list of line items, the client picks nothing, there is one pricing outcome per document, and the people building documents are on a plan below Business. A scoped service agreement with four rows does not need a quoting engine.

Move to Quote Builder when any of these are true:

  • The client should choose between options or tiers inside the document.
  • You sell packages that should present as one line with contents visible, which is what bundles do.
  • Reps need to see cost and margin before sending.
  • Quotes carry recurring charges with a contract term, or collect recurring payment.
  • You maintain several near-identical templates whose only difference is which products appear. That is a template sprawl problem, and sections plus selection rules solve it in one template.

One more input to the decision: PandaDoc has said pricing tables are being upgraded to Quote Builder. Existing pricing-table templates are not breaking, but a new build with any of the complexity above should start on the new block rather than inherit a migration later. If you are mid-decision on plans, note the gating: the block needs Business at minimum, and some of its rule-driven behaviour needs Enterprise, which we cover in our PandaDoc plan comparison.

Multi-option quotes from one template

The recipient options are what make Quote Builder a different product rather than a prettier table, and they fix the most common quoting workaround we see: exporting three PDFs for three options, or duplicating a template per package. One agency we spoke to put 45 to 50 minutes on each proposal it built, and duplication like this is a big slice of that time.

Three mechanisms, each set in the block:

  • Optional items. Toggled per item from its menu, or per section. Optional items arrive pre-selected and the recipient can deselect them; the total updates as they do. This is the passive upsell row and the revision-cycle killer in one control.
  • Selection modes. Each section has a Recipient options setting: Customized selection is the default, where you mark some items required and others optional; Single-item selection forces a pick-one choice, which is how a Good, Better, Best decision happens inside the document; Multiple-item selection pre-selects everything and lets the client uncheck. Section-level single or multiple selection does the same at package level, though PandaDoc is rolling that out gradually, so not every account sees it yet.
  • Quantity editing. On by default for volume-based catalog products and switchable per item, so a client can set seat counts or unit quantities themselves and sign, instead of emailing for a revision.

One rule to design around: a recipient can only select, deselect or change quantities if they are a signer with at least one field assigned to them in the document. Send a quote with interactive options and no signature field for that contact, and the options are dead. Make the signature block part of the template so this never depends on a rep remembering.

The governance point matters as much as the interactivity. Every choice you hand the client should be a deal you would accept: optional rows carry real prices, editable quantities get floors where unit economics demand them, and the mandatory core of the project stays unselectable. The block gives you the controls; a proper PandaDoc CPQ implementation is deciding what to lock, what to open and what to price-rule before reps start sending.

Bundles: sell packages, not line-item archaeology

Product bundles group several catalog or custom products into one unit that presents under a single name, with the included products listed beneath it. Pricing is either a custom amount, where the bundled item values are ignored and you set the package price directly, or bundle subtotal, where the price is calculated from the contents.

Bundles are how you stop quotes reading like inventory exports: an onboarding package with six components is one decision for the buyer, not six lines to question individually. The constraints worth knowing: bundles cannot nest inside other bundles, recipients select or deselect a bundle as a whole rather than its parts, mixing one-time and recurring products in one bundle is still rolling out and does not sync with CRMs, and with custom-amount pricing the per-item values are not shown. All of that pushes the same direction: treat a bundle as a packaged offer with one price, not a folder of negotiable parts.

Margin visibility: see profit before you send

Quote Builder carries a Cost column, and with costs populated the block shows total cost, profit and margin for each quote block and for the whole document, under the total value next to the document title or via View, then Profit margin. Revenue uses the total contract value when the quote has one, taxes are excluded throughout, unselected optional items are excluded, and negative margin shows in red.

This is the feature that quietly changes behaviour. Discounting stops being a feel decision when the rep watches margin move as they type, and a manager approving a discount sees the real number rather than reconstructing it in a spreadsheet. Teams we spoke to were assembling 60-month pricing models from Excel and CRM data by hand precisely because nothing in their stack showed deal-level margin; the quote block holding cost data is the structural fix. Hide the Cost and Savings columns from the client with the Show for recipient toggle, and lock them so Member-role users cannot unhide or edit them.

The limits are honest ones: no per-line profit breakdown, no per-billing-period margin view, and multi-currency documents only roll blocks matching the document currency into document-level totals.

Recurring billing and contract terms

Recurring products bill weekly, monthly, quarterly or annually, with a Contract Term column setting how many periods, or Unlimited for an open-ended subscription. Paired with a payment app and Stripe, the recipient sees an initial payment and a total contract value, pays in the document, and the gateway stops the subscription when the term ends. Discounts meant for every recurring charge go in the Discount column; a first-payment-only discount belongs in a footer. The signed document becomes the billing instruction, not a PDF someone re-keys into a payment system.

Wiring it into your CRM and rules

Quote Builder supports product import from Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive, Zoho CRM and Microsoft Dynamics once the integration is enabled under Settings, then Integrations. Deal line items arrive in the block with the data the CRM holds, which means the quote starts from the deal instead of from memory. Manual proposal assembly was the top pain in 82 of 129 calls we analysed, and CRM-fed quote creation is the single biggest cut to it. One gotcha: in a block with several sections, imported CRM products land in the last section, so keep a dedicated section for deal items or move them deliberately. The PandaDoc HubSpot integration is the deepest of these pairings, and our HubSpot guides cover the full deal-to-document flow.

Two rule systems sit on top of the block:

  • Approval rules can gate sending on quote values such as discount levels, so the 20 percent discount needs a manager and the 5 percent one does not. Design those with our approval workflows setup guide: gate exceptions, not routine deals.
  • Smart content rules on Enterprise can use the quote block as a trigger: terms, implementation scopes or compliance sections appear when a matching product or quote value is in the quote and hide when it is not. Conditions check system fields, custom fields or CRM-imported fields with first-match-wins logic, and the feature is rolling out gradually, so some accounts need to request access. How conditional content works in general is covered in our smart content and conditional logic guide.

This is also where build order matters. The block rewards a clean catalog, agreed pricing rules and decided guardrails, and punishes improvisation: 500 products of inconsistent SKUs with no cost data is just a faster way to send the same errors. The sequencing, catalog first, then rules, guardrails, approvals and CRM wiring, is the five-layer model from our CPQ implementation guide, and it applies to Quote Builder exactly. Scale is rarely the constraint: we have scoped requirements around 80 documents a day, and the bottleneck was the untidy catalog, never the block.

Setting it up properly

A sensible first build: pick one quote type with real optionality, model it as one template with sections and selection rules, populate costs for the products involved, set quantity floors and discount approval gates, test it with a live deal’s CRM data, then retire the duplicate templates it replaces. Template structure and variable hygiene follow the same rules as any PandaDoc template build, and our PandaDoc implementation pillar covers the full sequence from scoping to cutover. If you want the quoting layer designed and built rather than discovered feature by feature, that is the work of our PandaDoc CPQ service.

Frequently asked questions

Which PandaDoc plans include Quote Builder? Business and Enterprise. The block does not exist on Starter, and within eligible accounts only owners, Admins and Managers can add or configure it; Member-role users build documents inside the structure Admins set. Some related features gate higher: smart content rules triggered by quote blocks are Enterprise.

What is the difference between a quote builder block and a pricing table? A pricing table is a single calculating table of line items. Quote Builder adds sections with their own footers and selection rules, product bundles, recipient options such as pick-one tiers and editable quantities, a Cost column with profit and margin visibility, and recurring billing with contract terms. PandaDoc has said pricing tables are being upgraded to Quote Builder, so complex new builds belong on the new block.

Can clients choose options and change quantities themselves? Yes. Items and sections can be optional, sections can enforce single or multiple selection, and quantities can be client-editable per item, with the total recalculating live. The recipient must be a signer with at least one assigned field in the document, otherwise the interactive options will not work for them.

Does CRM data flow into Quote Builder? Yes, from Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive, Zoho CRM and Microsoft Dynamics: deal or opportunity products import into the block rather than being retyped. Note that imports land in the last section of a multi-section block, and bundles mixing one-time and recurring items do not sync with CRMs.

Do I need help implementing it, or is it a DIY feature? Adding the block is easy; the catalog, costs, selection rules, guardrails and approvals behind it are the actual work, and they are decisions before they are configuration. A team with a clean catalog and simple options can self-serve with the steps above. If quoting errors, template sprawl or margin blindness are already costing you deals, a fixed-scope build gets the whole layer live in weeks: see our CPQ implementation guide for what that involves.