When you review a specification, you typically have two objectives:

Accordingly, SonicSpec allows you to store compliance responses ("Compliance" for short) and product, accessory, service, or option selections ("Quote Considerations" for short) to add to your bill of material for each specification.

In the two markup columns next to each spec phrase, SonicSpec shows the Compliance in the left column and the Quote Consideration in the right column:

Compliance responses allow you to state your compliance with a specification.

The default compliance options include:

Additionally, you can provide a comment with any compliance to provide additional details. For example, a "Deviation" likely needs some sort of explanation about how you plan to deviate from the requirement.

SonicSpec provides color coding for popular terms when they appear in a Compliance:

A Quote Consideration could be any product option or accessory that must be included with your bill of material or quote as a direct result of a certain spec phrase.

Quote Considerations that appear in the specification are then aggregated in the Quote Considerations list on the right side of the spec editor interface:

This allows you to easily reference the full list of products, accessories, and options that you must include with your quote or bill of material.

Quote Considerations are also open-ended and can be used in multiple ways.

For example, the above screenshot shows how obvious product options can be added as a result of a clear spec requirement.

But the below is an example of how you can utilize a Quote Consideration to ensure certain considerations or checks are done by the salesperson, estimator, or project manager when analyzing a more project-specific or custom requirement. This allows you to partially automate the process of translating confusing, jargon-laden specifications that could easily be missed into easy-to-understand instructions when the product, option, or accessory may not be completely straightforward from job-to-job.

You would not want to universally comply with this requirement since the job site's distance from your service center will vary from job-to-job. However, you can make sure this requirement does not get missed by adding a reviewer note that will always makes sense regardless of switch size.

It is recommended that you provide a Response that assumes the Quote Consideration was provided.

For instance, in the below example, we assume that we will provide the required quarterly preventative maintenance agreement since it is a listed requirement in the specification and we have the capability to offer this.

However, in the below enclosure example, we may not have the capability to meet the required wind rating regardless of the enclosure we provide. In this case, we will add the Quote Consideration that helps us match this specification as best as possible ("Weather Enclosure"), while providing the Deviation response to indicate that we will not comply with the requirement even if we provide our Weather Enclosure option.