Use this article when you are opening Estimate Setup for the first time and want to understand the layout before you start configuring substrates and machines. After this you will know which area owns which setup decision, where staged edits live, and how the sidebar groups production capabilities, products, and pricing.
What Estimate Setup navigation is
Estimate Setup is the workspace where you configure everything GelatoConnect Estimator needs to quote: substrates, presses, finishing, binding, products, reference data, pricing, and settings. The layout has three parts. The left sidebar lists the setup areas grouped by purpose. The header shows the current area title, the search field, the card/table toggle when the area supports both, History, and the AI Configurator entry. The main panel shows the table or editor for the area you selected.
The sidebar groups areas by what they configure rather than by which team owns them. Production capabilities (substrates, presses, finishing, binding) sit at the top because they are the foundation every quote uses. Products and reference data sit in the middle because they reuse those capabilities. Pricing and settings sit at the bottom because they layer on top.
Every edit you make stages in Pending Changes until you select Apply Changes. Pending Changes appears at the top of the sidebar whenever there is at least one staged edit, so it is impossible to lose track of unfinished work.
A worked example
Northgate Press' admin is onboarding the shop. She opens Estimate Setup for the first time and starts at the top of the sidebar.
Under Substrates, she opens Commercial Print and sees the seed substrate rows including the SRA1 row in Silk 100gsm. Under Print Machines, she opens Sheet-Fed Offset and finds the XL105 entry with its machine rate, plate cost, and output-per-hour fields. She edits the machine rate from the template value to the shop's actual rate of 190 EUR per hour. The Pending Changes count in the sidebar goes from zero to one.
She moves to Finishing Machines → Cut to confirm the Guillotine 1 is configured, then to Binding Machines → Saddle Stitch to set up Stitcher 1 for the shop's stitched book products. Each save adds to the Pending Changes count.
Under Products → Categories, she opens the Stitched Book row and confirms that the saddle stitch step is wired to the binding line on the category's body part. She also opens Reference Data → Page Folds to confirm the standard tri-fold and gate-fold panel layouts the shop offers are present.
She moves to Category Pricing to set the markup model for the categories she has just touched, and finally to Settings → Connections to confirm the MIS handoff endpoint.
She opens Pending Changes at the top of the sidebar, reviews the list of staged edits (XL105 rate, Stitcher 1 fields, the new tri-fold entry, the markup change), and selects Apply Changes. The count returns to zero. The next quote that runs Calculate uses the new configuration.
What this affects
Which production routes Calculate can pick — substrates, presses, finishing, and binding entries define the route graph. Adding or editing them changes the routes available on the next Calculate.
The price-breakdown lines on every quote — rates and capacities you set in each area drive the cost lines per step.
Pending Changes — every edit you make in any area stages here until you select Apply Changes. Nothing is live until you do.
What this does not affect
Already-sent quotes — quotes are calculated at the time of Calculate. Setup edits do not retroactively change a sent quote.
Other GelatoConnect modules — Estimate Setup edits affect Estimator only. Customer records, shipping, and catalog data are administered in their own modules.
The AI assistant's intake behaviour — the assistant maps customer requests onto product fields, but it does not pre-screen requests against your setup. Setup gaps surface during Calculate, not during intake.