Plain-English guide
Automating quotes: from voice note to priced estimate
Quoting is the most expensive unpaid work in most service businesses. The site visit is essential; the hour of typing afterwards is not. Here is how businesses are collapsing that hour into the drive home — talk the job through into your phone, and a priced draft is waiting when you get in.
By Matt Rooney · 23/08/2026 · T19 Digital
How voice-to-quote actually works
You record a voice note on the way back: measurements, materials, access problems, anything odd. The AI turns it into a structured draft — line items priced from your own rate card, your standard terms attached, the customer’s details already in from the enquiry. You read it, adjust the two lines that need judgement, and send. The judgement stays yours; the typing stops being yours.
Where the hours actually go
A business quoting ten jobs a week at forty-five minutes each is spending a working day, every week, on paperwork about work it might not win. Cutting that to ten minutes of review per quote returns most of a day — and quotes that go out the same evening win more work anyway, because speed reads as competence.
What it needs from you first
A rate card that exists somewhere other than your head — even a rough one; the system tidies it as you correct drafts. Your usual terms. And two dozen past quotes so it learns how you phrase things, because a quote that does not sound like you gets rewritten, and then you are back to typing.
Cost and the honest caveat
Builds like this run £4,200–£8,000 with us depending on what it connects to, then pennies per quote in AI usage on your own account. The caveat: if your pricing is genuinely bespoke every single time — no patterns at all — automation drafts less and you review more. The discovery day exists to find that out before you spend, and you keep the written answer either way.
Questions we get on this
Does the customer see an AI-written quote?
They see your quote — reviewed and sent by you. The AI drafts; nothing leaves without a human deciding it should.
What if my prices change all the time?
Then the rate card lives where you can edit it, and drafts follow it from that moment. Volatile materials pricing usually means the AI drafts labour and structure, and flags the volatile lines for you.
Can it quote from photos as well as voice notes?
Yes — photos of the job, the meter cupboard, the damage. Voice plus photos together produce the most accurate drafts, because that is exactly what you would use.
Sixty seconds gets you a number
The estimator prices your version of this without asking for an email.