Quoting faster without cutting corners

Why same-day quoting wins work

Customers rarely pick the cheapest quote. They pick the one that arrives while the job is still front of mind and looks like it came from someone organised. If your quotes take four days because they wait for a spare evening, you are losing jobs on timing, not price.

What goes into the build

That is why it prices at your rates rather than guessing at market rates — the rules are yours, written down once and followed every time.

• Your labour rates, by trade and by task, including travel and minimum charges.
• Material costs, and where they are checked from if they move.
• Your margins and how they apply to labour, materials and subcontract work.
• Standard inclusions, exclusions, assumptions and payment terms.
• Your proposal wording and layout, so it looks like your quote, not a template.

A real example

A Melbourne builder used to spend Sundays writing quotes. Their rates, equipment costs, overheads and proposal template were built into one tool: they enter sizes and quantities, it checks current material costs and produces the priced proposal in their format. Same-day quotes, and Sundays back.

The corners you must not cut

• You approve every price before it leaves the business — always.
• Anything the tool had to assume is listed on the quote as an assumption.
• Unusual scope gets flagged for you rather than priced by pattern.
• Variations follow the same rules, so a change is priced consistently with the original.

How to work out what it is worth

Count last month's quotes and multiply by the honest minutes each one takes, including the false starts. Eight quotes a week at 40 minutes is over four hours. Then add the jobs you know you lost because the quote was late — that is normally the bigger number.

If it clears the bar, quoting is the task we would build first in a $599 incl GST First AI Win, and variations usually follow it.