Software that handles quotes and estimates easily

Last updated: September 2026

Quote or estimate?

Worth being precise, because customers hear a difference even when trades use the words loosely. A quote is a fixed price for defined work. An estimate is your best guess at work whose extent is not yet known.

The trouble starts when a document says estimate and behaves like a quote, or when a quote has “subject to what we find” buried in it. Either way, the argument happens at invoice time, which is the worst possible moment.

If the extent is genuinely unknown, price the investigation as its own small job with a fixed price, then quote properly once you have seen it. Customers accept that readily, and you get paid for the survey either way.

What a quote needs to get an answer

• Line items the customer recognises. Not “labour and materials”, but the work as they would describe it.
• A total with VAT handled clearly, so the number they remember is the number on the invoice.
• A validity date. This does more work than anything else on the page: it converts an open-ended maybe into a decision with a deadline.
• A deposit, where materials are involved. It is the difference between a customer who is interested and a customer who is committed.
• A way to say yes in ten seconds, on the phone, without printing, signing, scanning or finding a computer.

The last one is where most quoting systems lose the job. Every additional step between “yes, go ahead” and it being recorded is a chance for the week to swallow the decision.

Where Dispatch fits

Quotes in Dispatch are drafted against the job, with line items and VAT, a validity period that defaults to 30 days, and an optional deposit percentage. They can be submitted for approval if you want an office check before anything goes out, and issuing allocates a permanent number from your own QUO series.

The customer gets a PDF by email and a link to a page they can revisit. There is no login. They accept by typing their name, or decline with an optional reason, which is the single most useful piece of feedback a trades business can collect and almost never does.

Accepting does two things immediately: it drafts the final invoice from the quote, and where a deposit was set, it issues a real deposit invoice they can pay at once by card. So the moment of enthusiasm is the moment the deposit is taken, rather than three days later when you remember to ask.

That is deliberately not a signature. Nobody draws anything, and the quote page does not pretend to be a legal signing ceremony: it is a recorded acceptance with a name, a time and an audit trail behind it.

Why the deposit changes the conversation

A deposit is not a cash flow trick. It is a filter. Customers who are genuinely ready pay it without comment, and customers who are not were never going to give you a start date either.

It also protects you on the specific risk that ruins small trades businesses: materials ordered, cut to size, and then a customer who goes quiet. Quoting with a deposit covers how to set the percentage and how to talk about it without sounding suspicious.

Chase the quote, once

Unanswered quotes are the largest pile of forgotten money in most trades businesses, and the reason is that nobody owns them. The job is not booked, so it is not on the calendar; the work has not happened, so it is not on an invoice list.

The dashboard in the app carries a tile for quotes the customer has not answered, which is enough to turn it into a habit: one chase, a few days before the validity date runs out, mentioning the date. “This one expires Friday” is a reason to ring that does not feel like pestering.

Then let it go. A quote that is chased twice and still unanswered is not a live job, and treating it as one distorts your week.

The limits worth knowing

There is no takeoff or measurement tool: areas, lengths and material quantities are worked out however you work them out now, and typed in as line items.

There is no stock or price-list integration with a merchant, so the catalogue of common charges is yours to maintain, and prices change when you change them.

And the quote page is an acceptance, not an electronically signed contract. For most trades work that is exactly right; if you need signed contracts for large projects, you will want something else alongside it.