How quotes work
The end-to-end quote flow. What the AI does. What you do. What the customer sees.
The short version
- Customer sends an enquiry through your public link.
- You approve it — customer gets an email with a booking link.
- Customer picks a quote-visit slot from your working hours.
- You confirm the slot — customer gets a confirmation.
- You visit the customer and take a look.
- Back in the van, you reply to Telegram with your notes (or type them into your dashboard).
- IntelliQuote drafts a quote from your notes and your rate card.
- You review and approve — customer gets the quote by email.
- Customer taps Accept.
Everything after Accept is covered in How stage invoicing works.
The AI draft — what it produces
Give it a paragraph or two of notes ("Two of us on site for about 5 days, strip old cedar shingles, replace deck boards where rotten, refit new shingles, felt and battens all included") and it comes back with:
- Scope of work — a concise 60-80 word summary the customer will see.
- Labour — a natural-language description of the work with a single labour price. E.g.
Labour: £3,000 — two of us on site for about a week, stripping and refitting. - Materials (optional) — same shape as labour.
Materials: £2,000 — cedar shingles, felt underlay, battens, ridge tiles. - Duration — natural language, taken from your phrasing. "About a week" is fine.
- Assumptions — a shortlist of what you're assuming (scaffold in place, mains water available). Falls back to the standard assumptions on your rate card.
- Exclusions — same shape. Falls back to your standard exclusions.
- Payment schedule — proposed stages based on the job size and your default preset. See Configurable payment stages.
Customers never see an hourly rate
TradesOps deliberately never puts an hourly rate on a customer-facing quote. Most UK tradespeople quote lump sums per job (labour + materials), so that's what customers see. You enter labour + materials prices directly — no rate card, no exposure.
Approving from Telegram
The AI's draft arrives in your Telegram chat with:
- A summary of the scope of work.
- Labour + materials + total.
- The proposed payment schedule.
- Two buttons: Approve and send or Regenerate.
Regenerate cancels the draft and prompts you to reply with fresh notes.
Approving from the dashboard
Open /dashboard/quotes/[id]/edit. You'll see every field on the draft as an editable form. You can:
- Tweak the scope of work.
- Adjust labour or materials price — the payment schedule auto-rescales so it still sums to the total.
- Edit the labour / materials narrative.
- Change the duration wording.
- Add or remove assumptions / exclusions.
At the bottom: Save changes (keep as draft) or Approve and send (send the customer email).
What the customer sees
A branded email from your-business-slug@tradesops.uk with:
- Your business name, greeting, scope.
- The Labour section (name, description, price).
- The Materials section (if present).
- Expected duration.
- Subtotal / VAT / Total.
- The payment schedule they're accepting.
- Assumptions and exclusions.
- A big button: View and accept.
The link takes them to /q/<token> on tradesops.uk — a printable public page with all the same information plus Accept and Decline buttons.
What if the AI gets it wrong?
You can always edit or regenerate before sending. If it's fundamentally off (missed a whole scope area, ignored materials), regenerate with more explicit notes. If it's small ("wrong end date", "wrong material list"), edit directly in the dashboard — that's faster than a full redraft.