The AI quoting workflow we build for trades businesses

It’s 8:40pm. You knocked off the tools two hours ago, the kids are down, and there are five quotes sitting in your head that haven’t been written. The switchboard upgrade. The hot water swap. The bathroom rough-in. Each one is real money, but none of it is real until it’s typed up and sent. So it waits for the weekend. By Saturday two of those people have already gone with the bloke who quoted them Tuesday.

The job goes to whoever quotes first, not whoever quotes best

Homeowners ring three trades. They’re not running a tender — they’re waiting for someone to get back to them with a number they can act on. The first clear quote in their inbox usually wins, often before the other two have even returned the call. You can be the best sparky or plumber in the area and still lose the job because you were up a ladder when the enquiry came in and didn’t see it till knock-off.

The fix isn’t working later into the night. It’s a system that handles the front end of quoting while you’re on the tools — catches the enquiry, gets the details, drafts the number off your own pricing — and then hands it to you to check. That’s the workflow we install for trades businesses, and it runs on the software you’re already paying for.

The workflow, start to finish

Here’s the whole thing as it actually runs, from the moment someone wants a quote to the job landing in your calendar. Every step is built on what you’ve already got — your job-management software, your phone, your inbox.

1. Enquiry lands — a phone call, a website form, or a missed call while you’re mid-job. Nothing falls through the cracks because no one was free to answer.
2. Instant reply and qualify — within a minute the customer gets a real response that asks the right questions: what’s the job, where is it, is it urgent, are they the owner. The same questions you’d ask, asked straight away.
3. Job details and photos captured — the system collects the address, scope, and a couple of photos of the board, the unit, or the leak, so you’re quoting off something real instead of a vague description.
4. Quote drafted from your price book — it pulls your rates, your standard line items, your callout fee, and builds a draft quote. Your pricing, your margins — not a guess.
5. You approve it on your phone — the draft lands on your phone. You read it, tweak the number if the job’s bigger than it looked, and tap send. Nothing goes to a customer until you’ve said yes.
6. Quote sent the same day — the customer has a clear, professional quote in their inbox hours after they enquired, not next weekend.
7. Follow-ups run on their own — if they go quiet, the system chases politely on a schedule — a day later, a few days later, the following week — until they say yes, say no, or the trail goes cold.
8. Job booked in — when they accept, it drops the job into your calendar and your job software, so it’s scheduled, not sitting in your head.

That’s eight steps, and you’re only hands-on for one of them — the approval. The typing, the chasing, the data entry, the “did I ever get back to that bloke” — that’s the part the system carries.

It’s built on the software you already run

We’re not asking you to throw out your job-management software and learn something new. If you run ServiceM8, Tradify, simPRO, AroFlo or Buildxact, that stays the engine. The quote still lives there. The job still books there. The system sits on top, doing the fetching and the typing and the chasing, and writing back into the software you already trust.

Same with the money side. Your quotes and invoices keep flowing into Xero or MYOB the way they do now. The phone and inbox you already use stay the front door. Nothing about how you actually run the business gets ripped out — the admin around it just stops being your job. That’s the principle behind every AI install we do: add to what works, don’t replace it.

You stay in control — nothing goes out without you

This is the part tradies ask about first, and fair enough. No, the system does not fire quotes off to customers on its own. It does the legwork — gathers the job details, drafts the number from your price book — and then it stops and waits for you. The quote sits on your phone until you’ve read it and tapped send. It takes the typing off your plate, not the judgement.

That matters because you know things the software doesn’t. The switchboard’s in an awkward spot. The roof access is a nightmare. This customer’s a referral from a good client and you want to look after them. You make those calls in ten seconds when the draft’s in front of you — and because the boring part is already done, you’re approving quotes in the ute between jobs instead of writing them from scratch at 9pm.

Built for your trade

The shape of the workflow holds across trades, but the detail is specific to the work. For electricians it’s switchboard upgrades, EV chargers, safety switches, fault-finding callouts — and the questions that tell an urgent no-power job from a quote-when-you-can one. The system learns which is which and responds accordingly.

For plumbers it’s blocked drains, hot water replacements, leak repairs, bathroom renos — the after-hours burst pipe that needs a callout now versus the kitchen tap that can wait till Tuesday. We tune the qualifying questions, the pricing logic, and the follow-up timing to the way your trade actually quotes and books. Same backbone, fitted to your work. You can see the full set of systems we build and where they slot in.

The point of all this isn’t to make you fancier. It’s to stop you losing jobs you should win, and to give you your nights back. The system catches every enquiry, qualifies it, drafts the quote off your own numbers, and chases it until there’s an answer — while you’re on the tools, or asleep, or actually having dinner with your family. You still run your business and you still approve every quote. You’ve just handed off the part that was keeping you up.