Quoting is the job you do after the job. You get home, you're knackered, and there's a stack of quotes to write before someone else gets in first. The tradies who win consistently aren't the fastest on the tools, they're the fastest to a clear, itemised quote. Here's how to get there without dropping your prices to do it.
1. Your rate card is the whole game
The single biggest reason quoting is slow, and the biggest reason quotes are wrong, is that you're pricing every job from scratch. You shouldn't be. Build a rate card once: your common line items, each with a unit (each, hour, m², lineal metre) and your price. A downlight supplied and installed. A metre of gutter. A square metre of turf. Once that exists, quoting stops being maths and starts being selection.
Keep it ex-GST and keep it current. Materials move; review your rates every quarter or when a supplier price jumps. A stale rate card is how you underquote without noticing.
2. Capture the job on site, not at the kitchen table
The details are freshest while you're standing in them. Before you leave, record a quick voice note describing the job the way you'd explain it to your apprentice, and take a few photos. "Six downlights in the lounge, new GPO by the kitchen bench, safety switch on the board, access is tight through the roof cavity." That 30 seconds saves you re-driving to site or guessing later.
3. Itemise, always
A lump-sum "$2,400 for the job" invites haggling and hides your value. An itemised quote does three things: it shows the customer exactly what they're paying for, it makes it obvious when they add scope, and it protects you when they claim something wasn't included. Break it into lines, show the quantity and the rate, let the total speak for itself.
4. Don't invent a price, flag it
If a job needs something that isn't on your rate card, do not guess a number to keep the quote moving. That's exactly how you end up quoting $200 for a $600 line. Leave it blank, flag it, and price it deliberately, add it to your rate card while you're at it so next time it's instant.
5. Send it same-day
Speed wins jobs. A quote that lands while the customer still remembers meeting you beats a better quote that arrives four days later. If your quoting process takes an evening, you'll always be slow. If it takes two minutes, you'll send it from the ute.
The goal isn't to quote cheaper. It's to quote accurately, fast enough that you're the first tidy number in the customer's inbox.
Where Agentize fits
Agentize is built around exactly this system. You set your rate card once, record a voice note on site, and the Quoter turns it into an itemised, GST-sorted, branded quote in about two minutes, priced only from your own numbers, never invented. You check it and send. It's free for your first three hours saved, so you can try it on your next few quotes before it costs you anything.