Which clauses must a Protective Case Sales quotation carry?

Nine: item, specification, tooling and ownership, price breaks, lead time, penalty, validity, payment, packing.

Can tooling be amortised into the unit price?

Yes, with an end point. After 800 units the price drops 22 CNY.

When does lead time start?

The day after both the deposit lands and the sealed sheet returns.

Why not offer open-ended validity?

Compound and hardware are over 60 percent of cost; beyond 45 days the material move cannot be predicted.

What penalty rate is realistic?

0.5 percent a day, capped at 8 percent, factory causes only.

Protective Case Sales Quotation: Spec, Tooling, Lead Time

Quick answer: A Protective Case Sales quotation is a draft contract, not a price note. Of its nine clauses, three must be written in figures: the specification down to tolerance, the tooling fee down to ownership, and the lead time down to its start date and penalty.

Protective Case Sales Quotation: Nine Clauses
The Specification Clause
The Tooling Clause: Who Pays, Who Owns
The Lead Time Clause
Validity and Payment
FAQ

1. Protective Case Sales Quotation: Nine Clauses

The usual sheet is a product name, one unit price and a line saying the contract prevails. It looks clean and hides risk. A Protective Case Sales quotation stands alone: a buyer decides from it, a factory schedules from it.

Clause	Must state	Cost of omitting
Item and model	model, colour, revision	wrong variant shipped
Specification	envelope, cavity, wall, material, tolerance	two versions at inspection
Tooling	amount, milestones, owner, life	tool stays with the factory
Price breaks	quantity bands, unit price	renegotiation on every top-up
Lead time	start condition, stage days	delay blamed on nobody
Penalty	rate, cap, exclusions	the clause is decorative
Validity	days, what follows expiry	old sheet used to press price
Payment	shares, milestones, currency	balance never collected
Packing	stack height, pallet, trade term	container loaded at the port

Omitting a clause costs: a sheet without tolerances adds 6 days of back-and-forth, and one without ownership leaves the mould behind.

2. The Specification Clause

Protective Case Sales specifications fit in five lines, each with a number: the envelope at its largest outline, stating whether wheels and handle are included; the cavity measured to the wall, foam excluded; the wall at nominal thickness with tolerance; the material by grade and melt index; the weight as a band.

Item	How to write it	Common gap
Envelope	520 x 380 x 210 mm with wheels, tolerance 2 mm	wheels not mentioned
Cavity	470 x 330 x 185 mm clear, foam excluded	foam taken as clear
Wall	4.0 mm, plus or minus 0.25 mm	average wall only
Weight	4.6 kg, plus or minus 3 percent	about 4.6 kg

Tolerance is the first column to disappear. A 0.25 mm wall tolerance is ordinary capability; leave it out and a buyer inspecting to 0.1 mm rejects three batches in ten.

At 4.6 kg plus or minus 3 percent, anything outside 4.46 to 4.74 kg stops at the weighing station. Colour follows, capped at 1.5 DE. Three words are banned here: about, roughly, as per sample.

3. The Tooling Clause: Who Pays, Who Owns

Tooling runs 24,000 to 96,000 CNY by outline and cavity count. The sheet states the amount, milestones and build time; tooling runs 18 to 25 days outside product lead time.

Model	Tooling fee	Owner	Unit price
Buyer buys out	paid in full	buyer	no amortisation
Factory holds	none, in price	factory	22 CNY higher to 800 units
Mixed	60 percent upfront	buyer, stored on site	balance over 2,000 units

Buy-out needs a storage clause: the tool stays on site, the buyer gives 30 days notice to collect it, storage is 600 CNY a year. Without it, a buyer assumes the mould can leave any morning.

The amortised model needs an end point: after 800 units the price drops 22 CNY, and without it the buyer pays the amortised rate for years. Ownership also carries life: 300,000 shots, then a named party pays for service.

4. The Lead Time Clause

The start condition comes first: deposit received and sealed sample sheet returned on the same day, which becomes day one. Then 7 days of material, 18 of moulding with changeover and first article, 15 of assembly, 40 in all.

The penalty runs at 0.5 percent per day, capped at 8 percent, factory causes only. Buyer changes, late approvals and late payment extend the date. A harsher rate only pushes the line later.

5. Validity and Payment

Validity is 45 days: compound and hardware make up over 60 percent of cost, and 45 days is one purchasing cycle. Beyond it, expiry means re-quoting or index-linking, with moves beyond 3 percent shared.

Payment splits three ways: 30 percent deposit, 60 percent against the bill of lading copy, 10 percent fifteen days after acceptance. Tooling runs 50 percent to build, 50 on passing trials, and packing closes the list at four layers high on a 1200 x 1000 mm pallet.

Conclusion

A Protective Case Sales quotation stands on three lines: specification written to tolerance, tooling written to ownership, lead time written to its start date. The other six clauses orbit them, fixing the time boundary of the price and the instalments of the money. Write all nine and Protective Case Sales stops patching the paper afterwards.

This article discusses only the container (case body) side of specifications and design intent, and does not cover any handling, loading or use of the contents.