BOM pricing · 5–15 minute response

BOM pricing, in minutes

Upload any bill of materials in any format. PDF, Excel, CSV, scanned spec book, photo of a markup. We parse the lines, source across multiple distributor inventories, and return a priced quote. No login, no sales call, no subscription.

The problem

Pricing a BOM is the slowest step in procurement.

A typical operational BOM, whether it is a 600-line commercial electrical takeoff, a 200-line restaurant smallwares order, or an 800-line MRO replenishment list, takes one to three days to price across multiple distributors. Most of that time is administrative, not analytical.

Distributor portals do not parse PDFs.

Your takeoff is in PDF or Excel. The distributor portal needs you to enter SKUs one at a time. So you retype the high-value lines, skip the rest, and miss the cross-category savings.

Three vendors per BOM is normal.

Wire from one. Devices from another. Fixtures from a third. Paper goods from a fourth. Each quote takes a day. By the time pricing is back, you are pasting numbers into a spreadsheet you will redo on the next bid.

Substitutions break your spec silently.

Half the lines are spec-grade. Distributors substitute on the quote without telling you. You catch it at delivery. Now you are reordering and re-pricing the substituted line.

Quote pricing expires before you ship.

You won the bid. The schedule moved three months. Now your quoted pricing is stale and you start the cycle again on the same BOM.

How BOM pricing works at Cintra

Upload. Parse. Source. Quote. In minutes.

The workflow is the same whether you are pricing 50 lines of restaurant smallwares or 1,500 lines of commercial electrical. The only thing that changes is which supplier network we route to.

01

You upload the BOM in any format.

PDF takeoff from an estimator. Excel from a detailer. CSV exported from McCormick, ConEst, or your ERP. Scanned spec book. Photo of a paper markup. Plain text email. We work from any of it. No login required.

02

We parse and normalize every line.

Each line is parsed for manufacturer, part number, description, quantity, and unit of measure. Ambiguous lines (no manufacturer specified, garbled part number, generic description like "1/2 inch coupling") are flagged for confirmation rather than silently substituted. You see exactly what was certain vs. what needed a judgment call.

03

We source across our distributor network.

Each line is routed across multiple distributor inventories for best available pricing and lead time. Commodity SKUs go to whichever supplier has the deepest stock at the best price. Spec items go to the manufacturer-authorized distributor. Substitutions are flagged.

04

You get a single priced quote, fast.

BOMs under 500 lines: typically 5-15 minutes during business hours. BOMs of 500-2,000 lines: typically 30-120 minutes. Quotes are honored through the bid cycle you specify. Approve and we ship.

Benchmarks

What "fast" actually means.

Specific numbers. Not "minutes, not days."

BOMs 0-200 lines

Median quote time: under 10 minutes during business hours (9 AM to 6 PM Eastern). Overnight: priced by 9 AM Eastern the following business day.

BOMs 200-500 lines

Median quote time: 10-20 minutes. The majority of commercial electrical and restaurant smallwares BOMs fall in this band.

BOMs 500-2,000 lines

Median quote time: 30-90 minutes. Multifamily portfolio buys and manufacturer MRO replenishment lists typically fall here.

BOMs over 2,000 lines

No hard upper limit. Send it. We will tell you the realistic window. Typical: same business day, sometimes split into multiple deliverables (one for the in-stock lines, one for specialty / spec items).

Scanned PDFs and photos

Add 5-10 minutes for OCR. Photos of paper markups, scanned spec books, faxed RFQs all work. Lower-quality scans may surface more ambiguous lines that need clarification.

Mixed-format BOMs

An Excel with a PDF attachment, or an email body with line items pasted in. We parse the combined inputs as one BOM. No need to clean up first.

Who uses BOM pricing

Five operational buyer patterns.

The shape of the BOM differs by vertical, but the workflow does not.

Commercial electrical contractors

Bid-cycle BOM pricing. PDF takeoff Tuesday, bid Friday at 2 PM. Wire, conduit, devices, fixtures, datacom in one quote. More for electrical →

Restaurant operators

Smallwares, paper, dispensing, sanitizer, cleaning chemicals. New-location open buys (300-500 lines). Quarterly replenishment buys. More for restaurants →

Multifamily property management

Make-ready supply, common-area MRO, jan-san. Portfolio-wide quarterly buys spanning 25-200 properties. Consolidated invoicing per property. More for multifamily →

Manufacturers

MRO replenishment lists from CMMS exports. Safety / PPE buys. Packaging consumables. Ship to plant floor,. More for manufacturers →

Data center operators

Build-out BOM pricing on PDU, structured cabling, arc-flash PPE, HV gloves, cable management, plenum cable. Spec-sensitive sourcing. More for data centers →

Federal small-business buyers

SAM.gov, GSA, set-aside quote responses. WOSB certified. NAICS coverage across nine codes. More for federal →

Why this exists

BOM pricing was a service. Then portals replaced it. Now AI brings it back.

For most of the 20th century, BOM pricing was a service distributors did for free. You faxed a takeoff, an inside-sales rep priced it, and you got a quote back in a day or two. Then distributor portals shifted the work onto buyers. You log in, enter SKUs, the system prices them. Cheap for the distributor. Slower for you. And impossible for any BOM that arrives as a PDF or scan.

The 1990s portal model still dominates.

Every major distributor still expects you to enter SKUs into a web form. The portal cannot read a PDF. It cannot reconcile against your CMMS export. It cannot handle a mixed-format BOM where half the lines are in Excel and half are in an email thread.

AI changes the unit economics.

Parsing a 500-line PDF used to require a human estimator. Now it does not. The same parse-normalize-quote workflow that took two days of inside-sales time runs in minutes. The cost structure is finally low enough to offer BOM pricing as a free service again. That is the wedge we are working.

We are not selling software.

You do not log in. You do not buy a subscription. You do not learn a new tool. You email or upload a BOM, the same way you would call your distributor's inside-sales rep. The AI is invisible. The output is a quote.

We are a distributor with new infrastructure.

The actual product is operational supply, the same nine categories distributors have sold for a century. The difference is the front door. Speed of quoting and breadth of sourcing replace the inside-sales rep and the multi-distributor scramble.

FAQ

BOM pricing questions buyers ask before they upload.

What is BOM pricing as a service?

BOM pricing as a service means you send a bill of materials in any format you have (PDF, Excel, CSV, photo, plain text) and receive a priced quote within minutes. Cintra parses every line, normalizes manufacturer part numbers, sources across multiple distributor inventories, and returns a quote with substitutions flagged. Typical BOMs of 200-2,000 lines are priced in 5-15 minutes.

How fast is BOM pricing typically?

Cintra targets 5-15 minutes for BOMs under 500 lines during business hours. Larger BOMs (500-2,000 lines) typically come back within 30-120 minutes. Overnight RFQs land in inboxes by 9 AM Eastern the following business day.

What does a BOM pricing service cost?

There is no per-quote fee. You pay only the line-item cost on items you proceed with. Cintra margin is included in the quoted prices, the same way any distributor's margin works. No subscription, no minimum, no login required to request a quote.

What categories of BOM does Cintra price?

Industrial MRO, janitorial and sanitation, packaging, safety and PPE, medical non-clinical, office, electrical and datacom, HVAC and plumbing, foodservice and disposables.

Is the BOM pricing accurate compared to direct distributors?

On commodity items pricing is typically within 1-3% of major distributors. On specialty or low-velocity items there can be more variance. The wedge is speed, multi-vendor sourcing in one quote, and the ability to price formats distributor portals refuse.

Will my BOM be used to train AI models?

No. Customer BOMs are not used to train any external model. They are processed for the purpose of returning a quote and retained for order fulfillment and audit. Customer-identifiable data is never shared with third parties beyond the suppliers needed to fulfill the specific order.

Do I need an account?

No login is required to request a quote. You will be asked for credit references and tax-exempt documentation only when you place a first order with net terms.

Can I send a BOM that is just descriptions, no part numbers?

Yes. We will reverse-lookup likely SKUs against descriptions and flag anything ambiguous. Common for restaurant smallwares and multifamily make-ready orders where the spec is written in human-readable terms.

Try BOM pricing on your next quote.

Upload the BOM. Get priced lines back in minutes. No login. No commitment.