From Site Visit to Sent Quote in 3 Minutes

The driveway workflow that ends with a quote in the client's WhatsApp before you leave the property. Step by step, timed, and tuned for a working tradie.

Most tradespeople still quote from a desk. They finish a site visit, drive home, eat dinner, sit down at the laptop later that night or the next morning, and write the quote in Word or Excel. By the time the client opens it, forty-eight hours have passed, the site visit is a fading memory, and a competitor has landed a fresher quote in the meantime. The whole workflow is set up to lose jobs to speed even before price and presentation come into play.

The alternative is not a bigger laptop or a fancier office. It is a three-minute workflow that runs on your phone in the driveway before you turn the key. Done right, the client's WhatsApp buzzes with the quote before you have merged into traffic. Here is the playbook, minute by minute, tuned for a working tradie with dirty hands and a small screen.

Minute zero: while you are still on site

The three-minute quote is only possible if you have already done the thinking during the walk-through. Two habits, both fast: as the client walks you through the job, ask enough questions to know exactly what is in scope AND what is not ("just the kitchen taps, or the whole basin unit too?"). Second, jot the scope as a voice note on your phone the moment you get back to the truck. Not later. Now. The scope has to leave your head onto the phone before you drive off, or you will paraphrase from memory later and get half the detail wrong.

Minute one: open the app, pick the client

Sitting in the driver's seat, open the free quoting tool for tradespeople. Tap New Quote. Pick the client from your list if they are already there, or add a new one with just three fields (business or personal name, phone, email). The address auto-fills from the phone's memory. This first minute is where a paper workflow would already be losing you five minutes. On your phone it is nothing.

Minute two: dictate or type the line items

Two paths depending on your plan. On the free tier, tap Add Item and either type each line or drop in preset lines from your saved library (call-out fee, labour rate per hour, common material lines). If you have set up your library well, most of your quotes are seven or eight taps in this step. On the premium plan, tap Voice to Quote and dictate the scope in a single 20-second take ("replace kitchen taps, both hot and cold, remove old, supply new pillar taps at 1200 rand each, 45 minutes labour"). The AI drafts the line items and rates from your history. Either way, this step is under 90 seconds. See the Voice to Quote feature for the premium path.

Minute three: check the total, add a next-step line, send

Scroll to the totals. Check the number. If it needs a small round (R 5,240 becomes R 5,250 for readability), tap edit. Confirm the deposit split if the job is over your usual threshold. Add a single sentence at the bottom of the quote ("To go ahead, tap Accept on the link above or pay the deposit into the account below. Any questions, message me on this number"). Tap Send via WhatsApp. The message pre-fills with a greeting and the shareable link, the client's chat opens, tap send. Done. Total on-phone time: about three minutes.

What NOT to do in those three minutes

Do not spend the third minute polishing the layout. The template already handles that. Do not spend the second minute re-typing scope details you already voice-noted. Read from the voice note. Do not spend any of the three minutes checking your rates against a materials price list on the truck. If a specific line needs a rate check, put a temporary rate in and send anyway with a note ("final rate on part X confirmed once supplier confirms availability, expected 24 hours"). Fast plus honest beats slow plus complete every time.

Why speed matters more than most tradies think

A quote sent within two hours of a site visit closes at roughly double the rate of one sent two days later. Not because the tradie doing the fast quote is a better salesperson, but because two forces work in your favour: the client is still fresh on the problem you are solving, and no competitor has landed yet to anchor them on a different number. Fast quoting is also the trust signal that says (quietly, without saying it) that you run the actual work with the same crisp discipline. Slow quoting suggests the opposite even if the job itself is done well.

When the three minutes is genuinely not enough

Some jobs need real thought before you can quote them properly. A bathroom refit with structural work, an extension, a bespoke build. On those, the driveway approach is to send a range in three minutes ("you are looking at somewhere between 45,000 and 65,000 based on what I saw, I will send the full itemised quote tomorrow after I have confirmed material lead times"), and to send the firm quote within 24 hours. The range serves the same speed function: it lands while the client is still fresh, and it qualifies serious clients quickly.

The habits that make it repeatable

Three things separate the tradies who consistently run the three-minute workflow from those who mean to and rarely do:

• A well-populated line-item library. Every trade has ten to fifteen lines that recur across most quotes. Building the library on a slow week means the second quote of the day builds itself.
• Voice notes on every drive between jobs. The habit takes a week to bed in and then becomes automatic. The voice note is the raw material for the whole workflow.
• A no-desk rule. Quotes get written on the phone or not at all. The tradies who try to do both ("I will jot notes now and write the proper quote at home") end up doing neither and quoting in fits and starts.

How QuoteGenio handles the driveway workflow

The QuoteGenio flow is built around this specific play: mobile-first quote editor, saved line-item library on every plan, WhatsApp send that pre-fills the message with the shareable link, and one-tap Accept for the client. Voice to Quote and Photo to Quote sit on the premium plan for the tradies who want to shave the three minutes down to ninety seconds. The whole workflow, minus the AI-heavy tools, is available on the free plan, which means you can bed in the three-minute habit without paying anything extra.