Frequently asked questions

27 of 27 questions

• Implementation & onboardingHow long does implementation take?+

  A single product family with one price book is typically live in four to six weeks. The variable is not our software — it is how much of your pricing logic currently exists only as convention. Catalogues with deep deduction tables or eleven customer-specific discount schedules take eight to twelve weeks, most of which is us sitting with the person who holds that knowledge and writing it down.

• Implementation & onboardingWho does the catalogue modelling — us or you?+

  We do the first product family with your estimator in the room, then hand over the pattern. The goal is that your team can add family number four without us. On Enterprise a dedicated solutions engineer stays through the second and third family; on Standard the handover is documented and guided rather than staffed.

• Implementation & onboardingCan you import our historical quotes?+

  Yes, as records. Historical quotes are imported for reference, search, and reporting, but they are not repriced by the engine — a quote produced by a spreadsheet in 2023 has no price book revision to reprice against, so recalculating it would invent a number that was never shown to the customer.

• Implementation & onboardingCan we run in parallel with our current process?+

  You can, and for the first two weeks you probably should. But parallel running past a month is the most reliable way an implementation fails: the spreadsheet stays authoritative, the system becomes a second place to type, and nobody trusts either. We will push for a cutover date and a named owner for it.

• Implementation & onboardingHow much training does an estimator need?+

  Roughly half a day for quoting, because the interface asks for finished dimensions and options rather than for prices. The longer training is for whoever maintains the catalogue — that is a genuine skill and it takes two to three sessions before someone is comfortable publishing a rule change.

• CPQ engine & precisionHow is rounding handled so totals reconcile?+

  Money is rounded to two decimals at the line level, and the document total is the sum of the rounded lines rather than a rounded sum of unrounded lines. Rates and geometry carry four decimals internally. This is why a Novel quote total always equals what you get adding the printed lines by hand, which is the first thing a controller checks.

• CPQ engine & precisionWhat dimensional precision does the configurator support?+

  Quarter-inch entry with sixteenth-inch internal resolution on cut derivations, because deduction arithmetic compounds and rounding at entry would push a tube cut out of tolerance. Metric catalogues are supported at millimetre precision. Mixing unit systems inside one catalogue is deliberately not allowed.

• CPQ engine & precisionHow is tax calculated for Ontario and cross-border quotes?+

  Ontario quotes carry 13% HST applied at the document level against the taxable subtotal, with exempt lines excluded. Cross-border quotes stamp the conversion rate and its retrieval timestamp onto the document, so a quote issued in March remains defensible in June because the rate it used is printed on the page rather than looked up again.

• CPQ engine & precisionCan a rep quote below the margin floor?+

  Not silently. The floor is evaluated at the line, at the document total, and again at approval. A quote below it can be sent only after an approval recorded against a named person, and that record is part of the append-only lineage. If your process genuinely needs unrestricted discounting, the floor can be configured off — but it is off by configuration, visibly, not by omission.

• CPQ engine & precisionIs a price calculated in the browser trustworthy?+

  It is a preview that is verified, never trusted. The same compiled engine recomputes server-side on commit and the server result is authoritative. Because both sides run identical code rather than two implementations, disagreement indicates a stale catalogue on the client — which is detected by content address and surfaced, not merged over.

• CPQ engine & precisionWhat happens when we requote an order from last year?+

  It reprices against the price book revision that was live on the original date, not today's book. That is what makes a disputed invoice resolvable. Repricing against the current book is available explicitly, as a separate action that labels itself on the document.

• Offline mobile & dispatchWhat exactly works with no signal?+

  Viewing the day's jobs, job completion, parts consumption, photo capture, signature capture, and pricing a change order against the cached catalogue. What does not work offline: assigning a new job that was created after the device last synced, and anything requiring a live third-party call such as a payment authorisation.

• Offline mobile & dispatchWhat happens if a dispatcher and a technician edit the same job?+

  Merge is per field and CRDT-based, so a dispatcher changing the service window and a technician recording parts consumed both keep their change. Last-writer-wins applies only to scalar fields a single role owns. A genuine conflict — two technicians closing the same job — surfaces as an explicit review item rather than resolving silently.

• Offline mobile & dispatchDoes offline-first drain the device battery?+

  Less than the alternative. The app does not poll, because it does not depend on the network being present. Sync runs on reconnect and on a backoff schedule rather than continuously, and location is sampled at route-relevant intervals rather than continuously tracked. Continuous GPS tracking is available but off by default, and turning it on is a visible policy decision.

• Offline mobile & dispatchWhich devices are supported?+

  iOS 16 and later, Android 11 and later, on phones and tablets. The local journal is encrypted at rest using the platform keystore, so a lost device does not expose completed job data. Rugged Android handhelds commonly used in trades are supported; barcode scanning uses the platform camera API rather than requiring specific hardware.

• Offline mobile & dispatchWhat are the limits of route optimisation?+

  It optimises against time windows, technician skills and certifications, van stock, traffic profile, and an overtime ceiling. It does not model union rest rules, statutory break scheduling, or multi-day jobs spanning crews — those are configured as hard constraints you supply rather than derived. When a job cannot be placed within the constraints it is returned unassigned with the reason, never quietly dropped.

• Security, compliance & residencyWhere is our data stored?+

  Primary and replica are both in ca-central-1. No production record is stored or processed outside Canada. Edge nodes serving public quote links compute against content-addressed catalogue data and hold no customer records at rest. Subprocessors are published, and any change is notified in advance.

• Security, compliance & residencyAre you SOC 2 certified?+

  SOC 2 Type II is in progress, not achieved. The observation window opened on 1 March 2026 with an independent CPA firm and closes on 30 November 2026; the report is expected in Q1 2027 and will be published then. Dates rather than "in progress", because that phrase covers an audit that started last week and one that has been starting for two years — and a vendor who blurs the difference between an open window and a completed audit will blur other things too. Type I controls are documented and available under NDA today.

• Security, compliance & residencyHow do you handle PIPEDA access and deletion requests?+

  Personal information in the platform is largely customer contact records and technician employment data. An access request is fulfilled as a structured export within thirty days. Deletion is honoured except where a record is part of the append-only financial lineage — in that case the personal fields are redacted and the transaction record is retained, which is the position tax retention obligations require.

• Security, compliance & residencyCan your staff see our pricing data?+

  Not by default. Production access requires a named approval tied to a support ticket, is time-boxed, and is written to the audit log you can read. On Enterprise, break-glass access can be configured to require your approval before it is granted at all.

• Security, compliance & residencyWhat happens to our data if we leave?+

  You get a full structured export — quotes, catalogues, price books, jobs, and the audit lineage — in JSON and CSV, available on request at any point during the term and for ninety days after it ends. There is no export fee. Data is destroyed thirty days after the export window closes, and the destruction is attested in writing.

• Pricing, contracts & licensingWhat counts as a configured quote?+

  One quote document, regardless of revisions or line count. Revising a quote eleven times during a negotiation counts once. Charging per revision would penalise exactly the behaviour that produces an accurate document, so we do not.

• Pricing, contracts & licensingHow are dispatch seats counted?+

  A seat is a technician with the mobile app provisioned, not a concurrent login. Seats can be added mid-term with proration and removed at the next billing cycle. Removing a seat preserves that technician's completed-job history, because deleting it would break the audit lineage on jobs they closed.

• Pricing, contracts & licensingWhat are the contract terms?+

  Twelve months minimum on Standard and Business, billed monthly or annually. Annual billing is 20% below the monthly rate and invoiced once up front. Enterprise terms are negotiated, typically twenty-four to thirty-six months with a documented exit ramp. Auto-renewal is annual with sixty days' notice to cancel.

• Pricing, contracts & licensingIs implementation charged as a percentage of licence value?+

  No. It is a fixed scope priced against the actual work: the number of product families, the depth of the deduction tables, and the ERP entities in scope. Percentage-of-licence pricing means a larger licence buys a more expensive implementation for identical effort, which is not a defensible way to charge.

• Pricing, contracts & licensingWhat happens if we exceed our plan limits?+

  Quote overage on Standard is $600 per additional 500 quotes, billed in arrears rather than triggering an automatic mid-term tier change. Above 3,500 quotes a month the next block costs more than the whole Business tier, and if you sit above that line three months running we will tell you — that conversation is a support obligation, not a sales opportunity. Seats and vehicles work differently: both plans bill that overage at the same rate, so there is no volume at which moving up saves money on headcount, and we would rather say so than let you go looking for a threshold that isn't there.

• Pricing, contracts & licensingDo the SLA figures carry service credits?+

  On Enterprise, yes — the 99.99% uptime commitment attaches service credits on a published schedule, and credits are applied automatically rather than on request. Standard and Business publish target availability without contractual credits, and we say so rather than implying otherwise.