Insider Tips: Our Favorite Paperless Parts Features That Can Transform Your Quoting Workflow

Paperless Parts releases hundreds of platform updates every year. If keeping up with all the subtle yet impactful changes feels overwhelming, keep reading for the top 10 features our team feels are too important to miss (that are often missed).

We asked Paperless Parts team members, “What is your favorite feature of Paperless Parts that you wish more customers knew about and used?” Here’s what people said:

1. Custom Workflows & Saved Views
“I would love to see more shops using custom workflows to set up saved views on your quotes dashboard! This helps shops track their quote volume and quickly see which stage each open quote is currently in. You can use them to paint a picture of the current state of your quote backlog.” – Ethan Moitoza, Customer Success Manager

 

2. PDF Compare
“Often part buyers send POs with new packages of prints or drawing revisions during the quoting process. This forces our customers to sit there and ‘stare and compare’ to understand where the change was made and the impact of that change. Our ability to overlay PDFs for comparison, in addition to all of our PDF functionality, is a huge opportunity for us to create value through time savings and reduction in mistakes.” – Sarah McAuley, Chief Marketing Officer

3. Dynamic Lead Times
“Expedite options in Paperless Parts are one of the best ways shops can increase their margins and align more closely with where their buyers see value. I encourage every customer to offer multiple lead time/price combinations on their quotes because it increases margins, win rate, the speed in which orders come in, and the perception of value that the shop provides.” – Jason Ray, Founder & CEO

4. External File Sharing and Collaboration
“Customers who actively pursue conversations with their customers through Paperless Parts when design flaws are detected build stronger relationships and build pricing power. I recommend our customers provide design feedback to their customers using external share as soon as they identify an issue with the way a part was designed. This helps them move from being just a vendor to more of a partner and puts doubt in the buyer’s mind about any source that didn’t also identify the design issue.” – Alan Hawley, SVP of Sales

5. Internal Collaboration
“I think the Internal Collaboration feature is a great communication tool when quoting! Not only can teammates use this feature to take notes, but they can also ask each other questions directly in the platform and reference it all again in the future. In addition, the team can assign each other tasks, which I have seen work very well in the handoff process between the sales and estimating teams. Lastly, the communication is visible to everyone; this eliminates any unknowns that were masked previously with communication via email.” – Meghan Leone, Senior Implementation Project Manager

6. Replace Assembly with Manufactured Component
“While not glamorous, this low-key button holds tremendous power. When a file with multiple components is uploaded into Paperless Parts it will be labeled as an assembly and assigned an upper-level ‘assembly-only’ router. This button enables users to delete the upper-level assembly structure and delegate one component to the ‘parent.’ This gets rid of an extra router and simplifies both the quote and any subsequent BOM exports to ERP systems. If you don’t want a component router and an assembly-only router, this action is for you!” – Alex Renner, Business Architect

7. Quote Prioritization/Analytics
“The quote prioritization tools in Paperless help maximize the little time that we all have. When I was estimating, quotes were addressed in a FIFO (first in, first out) method. I spent many hours working on quotes that were for bad customers or the work was not in our wheelhouse. By providing analytics when a customer is selected, quickly performing fit assessments when applying processes, & displaying the quote priority on dashboards, Paperless would have helped my team focus on quoting the best work.” – Conner Hughes, Solutions Engineer

8. Task Management
“The ability to assign tasks to specific owners and set deadlines enables teams to stay on top of their work. Email and in-app notifications are auto-triggered when a task is marked as resolved. Tasks can be managed at the organizational level so open/overdue/completed tasks can be filtered and viewed.” – Will Scatchard, Account Executive

9. PDF Redaction
“So simple, but it allows users to stay in Paperless Parts and quickly redact information that they do not want shared externally. Without Paperless Parts, this is often done in a PDF editor, or worse, with scissors and sticky notes.” – Micaela Foley, VP of Demand Generation

10. Zip File Parsing
“No matter what collection of files you throw us—prints, models, pack-and-gos, password-protected files—you have a workflow within the app to pull apart that zip file and get your quote started. To spotlight our pack-and-go analysis, we will organize files into the proper pack-and-go collections regardless of native format: Solidworks, Unigraphics, Creo, Inventor, Solidedge…it doesn’t matter. We have baked years of tribal knowledge into this one feature. If you work with pack-and-gos, and you don’t really get how it works, lean on Paperless Parts to get you started.” – Dana Wensberg, Senior Software Engineer

How to Take Advantage of These Features

Feel like we missed anything? Want support mastering these features in your Paperless Parts account? Reach out to your Customer Success Manager today!

Don’t forget to browse our Power Lunch webinar archive for a wide array of short 20-minute training videos.