Compare card quotations on the same specification

Two unit prices are comparable only when they describe the same deliverable and the same commercial scope. Until that is true, the lower number is not information.

Quotations for plastic and RFID cards diverge in places a price list never shows. One supplier quotes blank stock collected at the plant gate, another quotes the same construction encoded, individually bagged and delivered. One folds an origination charge into the price per card, another bills it separately. Each of those differences moves the real cost per usable card by more than the gap between the two prices being set against each other.

The Kaway quotation normalisation sheet is four blocks held side by side for every supplier: technical scope, unit price with recurring charges, one-time charges, and written exclusions. A quotation that cannot be placed in all four blocks is not ready to compare, and the empty block is the question to send back.

01. Comparison starts with one written specification

The specification is the control in the experiment, not the quotation. A buyer who sends three suppliers a loose brief receives three readings of it, and the price spread that comes back measures the readings rather than the suppliers.

Construction, thickness, chip, encoding, artwork, finish, data processing and quantity all have to be fixed before the request goes out. Where the buyer is genuinely open to an alternative, the request should say so and ask for the alternative as a separate priced line rather than as a silent substitution. A supplier who offers MIFARE Classic EV1 1K where the request said MIFARE DESFire EV3 may be proposing a sensible saving, but it is a different credential and it belongs on its own line. What a factory needs in order to quote at all is set out in the guide to specifying a card order.

02. Normalise the technical offer before looking at price

Line up the technical rows first and put the numbers beside each other afterwards. Six rows do most of the work.

• Construction and thickness. PVC, recycled PVC, wood, composite, and the nominal thickness in millimetres with its tolerance.
• Chip and memory. The exact part, not the family. MIFARE Ultralight EV1, Classic EV1 1K, DESFire EV2 and DESFire EV3 are not interchangeable on an access platform.
• Encoding and data. Blank, UID read and supplied as a list, or sectors written. Each is a different amount of work at the plant.
• Artwork and finish. Print method, number of colours, laminate or varnish, and any signature panel or magnetic stripe.
• Packing and labelling. Bulk in cartons, boxed in fixed counts, or bagged individually, and what the carton label carries.
• Quantity and tolerance. The ordered quantity and the over or under run the supplier will invoice against.

Every row is either identical across the quotations or it is a difference with a price attached. A row that differs is not a reason to discard an offer. It is a reason to ask that supplier what the matching version costs.

03. Separate the unit price from the one-time charges

A one-time charge belongs to the first order, not to the card. Origination, tooling for a special shape, a cutting die, a plate set and a data template each cost money once and then cost nothing on a repeat.

Keeping them separate answers two different questions at once: what this order costs, and what the next one costs. A design that runs for three seasons spreads its origination across three orders. A seasonal promotion that will never be reprinted carries the whole charge itself. Both facts are invisible once the charges have been averaged into a price per card.

The trap is a supplier that folds the one-time charges into the unit price without saying so. The first order then reads as competitive and the repeat reads as expensive. Ask for one-time charges as their own lines, with a note on how long the tooling or the plate set stays valid and who holds it.

04. The delivery scope decides what the unit price covers

The named delivery term, not the unit price, decides who pays for the cartons once they leave the plant. The ICC Incoterms rules define the three-letter terms that set where cost and risk pass from seller to buyer, and a quotation without one of those terms has not said where its price stops.

Five more commercial lines belong in the same block: the currency and whether a rate has been fixed, the validity date of the quotation, the inspection scope with its sampling plan and acceptance level, the packing format, and the carrier, confirmed separately because freight capacity is set by a party that has never seen the artwork.

Inspection is the line most often left implicit. A quotation that says "quality checked" and one that names a sampling plan to ISO 2859-1 at a stated acceptance quality limit describe different amounts of work. How the agreed plan then gets applied on arrival is covered in the delivery inspection checklist, and the way requirements connect to tests is set out in the guide to card quality plans. Lead times and the freight side of the same question are treated in the guide to lead times and freight.

05. Exclusions are the part the quotation does not say

An unanswered question is not included at no cost. That single habit accounts for most of the gap between a quoted order and an invoiced one.

Exclusions worth asking for in writing, because they commonly sit outside a card quotation: encoding and key handling, serialisation and variable data, individual bagging, duties and clearance at destination, a second sample round, storage beyond an agreed number of days, and artwork changes after proof approval. None of those is unreasonable to exclude. What is unreasonable is to discover the exclusion after the purchase order.

A supplier that returns a written exclusion list is easier to compare than one that returns a lower number with nothing qualified, and that list is also the cleanest evidence of how well the brief was understood.

06. Build a comparison record, not a single total

Keep the original quotations exactly as they arrived and build the normalised comparison beside them. Rewriting a supplier's wording to fit a template destroys the only evidence of what was actually offered, and it is the supplier's wording that will be argued about if the order goes wrong.

Questions asked and not yet answered stay visible as open items. When an answer arrives, the comparison is revised with a date and a reference rather than quietly corrected. That record gives the person who signs the order a traceable reason for the decision, and it is the same evidence that later feeds a supplier approval file, treated in the guide to the supplier qualification record. Choosing which suppliers to invite in the first place is a separate exercise, set out in the twelve questions to ask before ordering.

07. The buyer checklist

Before approval

• One written specification, issued to every supplier in the same words.
• Alternatives quoted as separate lines, never substituted silently.
• One-time charges itemised, with their validity and who holds the tooling.
• Recurring charges marked as recurring, per card, box or data file.
• A named delivery term, currency, validity date and carrier.
• An inspection plan named, with its acceptance level and who performs it.
• Exclusions in writing from every supplier, including those stating none.
• Open items listed as open, with the date asked.
• A dated comparison record that keeps the raw quotations intact.

08. Worked example

Illustrative scenario, not a Kaway case study. A distributor asks three factories for 10,000 MIFARE DESFire EV3 cards, full colour both sides, for an access upgrade at a client site.

Supplier A quotes blank stock, bulk packed, collected at the plant. Supplier B quotes the same construction encoded, with a reconciled list of card numbers, individually bagged, inspected to a named sampling plan and delivered to the client's receiving bay. Their prices per card come back within a few per cent of each other, and supplier A is the lower of the two.

Normalising changes the ranking. Supplier A's offer has to gain encoding, a reconciled number list, bagging, the inspection and the freight before it describes the same finished state. Supplier C quotes the lowest unit price of the three but has left the chip line as "DESFire compatible", which is a technical scope question, and the right response is to ask for the exact part number rather than to rank the offer at all.

What gets recorded is not "supplier B was cheapest". It is "supplier B was lowest at the specified scope, supplier A was lower only on a deliverable the client could not use, and supplier C was not comparable until the chip was named".

09. Technical references

• The ICC Incoterms rules define the three-letter delivery terms that decide where cost and risk pass between seller and buyer, which is what a quotation is silent about when it names no term: iccwbo.org/business-solutions/incoterms-rules/.
• ISO 2859-1:2026 sets out the acceptance sampling schemes indexed by acceptance quality limit that turn a vague "quality checked" line into a comparable inspection scope: iso.org/standard/85464.html.

10. Where Kaway fits

Kaway Group Limited was incorporated in Hong Kong in 2015, and the team has been making cards for more than 15 years. Kaway manufactures in-house in Dongguan, China, so the technical scope, the one-time charges and the exclusions in a quotation come from the party that controls them rather than from an intermediary quoting a third factory.

Minimum order is 500 units. Standard production is 12 calendar days for PVC and wooden cards. Encoding is done at the plant, and every chip is read-tested individually before shipping, 100 per cent rather than by sampling. Quote requests are answered the same working day, which matters when a comparison is waiting on one open item. Send the specification and the required delivery date to have the four blocks returned filled in. Distributors comparing offers across several client sites can send the specification for each site in one request.

11. Frequently asked questions

Can two quotations be compared on unit price alone?

Only when the technical scope, the recurring charges, the one-time charges and the exclusions are already identical, which is rare without asking. The unit price is the last line to look at, not the first.

Where should a setup or origination charge appear?

As its own line on the first order, with a note on how long the tooling, die or plate set stays valid and who holds it. Folded into the unit price it distorts both this order and every repeat.

What if one supplier proposes a different chip?

Treat it as a second offer rather than a variation of the first. Ask for the specified part and the proposed part as separate lines, then decide on technical grounds whether the alternative is acceptable before looking at either price.

Does a comparison record need to be kept after the order is placed?

Yes, and it is the cheapest thing in the process to keep. The next time the same order repeats, the record is what stops the exercise starting from nothing, and it is the evidence behind a purchasing decision if anyone asks six months later.