If you work for yourself is creating the quote an annoying job?

[steve1970]

Hi everyone

At the end of last year I had some work done in my bathroom, tiling and plumbing. It took a while to get the quotes in and it occurred to me creating the quote might be a tedious part of being self employed? Over Christmas I thought it would be good if a quote for a job could be quickly created using a smartphone or simple web site and sent to the customer electronically.

Basically you'd enter your business details once into the app and choose a layout for your quotations. Then you’d visit the customer, discuss the work etc. Maybe give them a rough idea of the price. Back in your vehicle you’d enter some basic details about the customer, a brief description of work and amount etc and the customer would get a pdf sent to them. The idea being if you had a few quotes to get out you could do it during an ad break or while waiting for takeaway etc. I think it would only take about 2-3 minutes to create and send a simple quote like this.

If anyone thinks this would be useful please let me know in the thread below or by a private forum message. I do a little programming in my job and I'd like to have a go at creating such a system but only if it would be useful.

Thanks
Steve

 

[Chalked]

"Invoice to go"already has this.

 

[hammers4spanner]

welcome to the forum unfortunately their are numourous software packages thaat help you with estimating

 

[Ray Stafford]

I think that there are several similar packages on the market aren't there?

edit - oops, hammers beat me to the post.

 

[SimonG]

I have a computer full of templates and other junk just for this purpose.

 

[steve1970]

Thanks for the feedback. I didn't know about Invoices2Go.

regards
Steve

 

[gassafe]

It's an annoying & tedious job, but I find every job is different & I would imagine customers want a personal touch quotation not a few quick details wizzed over through an app!

These apps are taking over...

 

[ADM360]

As above, every job is different, length of pipe runs No. of joints needed, the fact that the merchants put the prices up yesterday. also need to get back to the office to actually work out what you need to do!
i can see it working well for the little jobs, but when the first thing to do is a load of heat loss calcs so you can the work out the rad sizes, before you can get a price for them, takes a bit longer, the sit and work out the pipe runs. Does my head in some times!!
I have even made up some spread sheets with every thing on it with prices next to everything works quite well till the prices change!

 

[steve1970]

Yeah, I see what you mean ADM360. I guess I had little jobs in mind, more simple domestic stuff, like I had done in the bathroom. Thanks for the feedback.

 

[Kev the gas]

Steve 1970

If you can create an app/software that will sort out the time waster element of a customer it could be a winner.

ie
Dear customer, please place your thumb on my device, it will tell me :-

A you are genuine
b you are genuine but cannot afford what you say you would like.
c you just want info so you can do the job yourself.
d your husband is not present because he knows nothing about the fact I am here
e
f
g
h
ect

I am sure others could add :90:

 

[steve1970]

Ok! but only after I've finished my lottery number predictor app....