A Quote Cost Came Back at Zero: Causes and Fixes

A quote that prices at zero almost always has one of three causes: no rate on the work centers the routing uses, a material fallback with nothing behind it, or a simulation that produced no scheduled hours to price. EDGEBIC by User Solutions builds a quote's cost from the simulated schedule rather than from a standard, so the cost is only as complete as the rates attached to the work centers that schedule actually used. A missing rate does not fail the calculation. It multiplies by zero and moves on, which is why the symptom is a quiet understatement rather than an error.

This post is the detailed version of the zero-cost symptom in the EDGEBIC troubleshooting guide. For the normal path, how to see the cost breakdown of a quote shows where the numbers land, and quote simulation explained covers how the schedule behind them is built.

What You Are Seeing

The quote shows a start date, an end date, and a believable hour total, but the cost is zero or obviously too low. Margin therefore reads as pure profit, which is the version of this problem that reaches a customer before anyone notices.

Why It Happens

Cause 1: The Work Centers Have No Rate

Labor cost is resolved per work center in two steps. The routing step's own labor rate is used when it is greater than zero, and the work center's rate is the fallback. When neither carries a rate, that work center contributes zero to the quote.

This is the most common cause and the least visible, because a routing with five operations and one unrated work center produces a cost that is wrong by one fifth rather than obviously broken.

How to tell: the hour total is right, the cost is a round zero or a suspiciously small number, and one or more work centers on the routing have no rate.

Cause 2: Material Cost Fell Back to a Single Unit Cost

If the simulated routing contains a work center flagged as material, material cost comes from those steps. If it contains none, the calculation falls back to the product's unit cost multiplied by the quantity.

That fallback is fine for a simple part and poor for an assembly, because a single unit cost cannot represent a bill with several purchased components. If the product's unit cost is also zero, the material contribution disappears entirely.

How to tell: the routing has no material step, and the material figure is either zero or exactly the unit cost times the quantity.

Cause 3: The Simulation Produced No Hours to Price

Cost is calculated from the schedule the simulation produced, and the hour total comes from the sum of the assigned hours rather than from the span between the start and end dates. If the simulation did not run, or ran and scheduled nothing, there is nothing to multiply.

How to tell: the hours read zero as well as the cost, and the quote has no simulated dates or has dates from an earlier run.

A Related Case: the Price Did Not Move, but the Cost Did

The automatic markup only fills a unit price that is currently zero. Once a planner types a price, later simulations leave it alone deliberately, so a repriced job never quietly overwrites a number already sent to a customer. Cost figures still refresh on every run.

How to Fix It

• For missing rates: put a rate on every production work center, and use the routing-step rate only where one operation genuinely costs differently than the machine's standard. Then re-run the simulation and apply the results.
• For material: model the purchased lines as steps on a material-type work center and give them a rate, rather than relying on the product unit cost fallback. Confirm the product's unit cost is populated as well, since it is the last line of defense.
• For an empty simulation: run the simulation again and confirm it produced operations before reading the cost. A quote with no schedule behind it has no cost by definition.
• For a stuck price: clear the unit price to zero and apply the simulation results again, which lets the markup refill it from the refreshed cost.

How to Diagnose It, in Order

1. Read the hour total first. Real hours with zero cost points at rates; zero hours points at the simulation.
2. Open the cost breakdown and find which work centers contributed nothing. Those are the ones missing a rate.
3. Check whether the routing has a material step. If it does not, the material figure is the unit cost fallback and should be read as an estimate.
4. Confirm the product's unit cost is populated, because it is what the fallback uses.
5. Re-run the simulation and apply the results, then compare the new breakdown line by line rather than only the total.

How to Prevent It

• Treat a work center rate as required master data. A production work center without a rate is a hole in every quote that ever routes through it, and the hole is silent.
• Model material as steps, not as a single unit cost, for anything with a real bill of purchased parts. Pricing a quote from the schedule covers how the pieces add up.
• Read the breakdown, not just the total. A total can look plausible while one operation contributes nothing, and the breakdown is the only place that shows it.
• Re-simulate after routing or rate changes, since the cost is a snapshot of the schedule at the time it was applied. Re-simulating a quote after a change covers when it is worth doing, and a quote will not convert to an order covers the guards that run when the quote is finally won.