Quote automation: every enquiry priced, drafted and chased, ready to check and send.
Every quote your office types by hand is the same job again: read the enquiry, work out the price, write it up, send it, chase it. We build quote automation around your own pricing rules, for Australian businesses whose quotes are too custom for off-the-shelf software.
What is quote automation?
Quote automation is a system that turns an enquiry into a priced, written quote without a person doing the steps by hand. It reads the request, gathers missing details, prices the job from your own rates and rules, and drafts the quote for a person to check and send. Some people call it quoting automation or AI quoting. Same thing.
The rules it prices from are usually already written down somewhere: in the pricing spreadsheet, in the old quotes folder, or in the head of the one person everyone asks. We turn those rules into a system that applies them the same way every time, at any hour, without tying up that one person's day.
The five levels of quote automation
Most businesses think quoting is either manual or automated. In practice there are five levels, and knowing which one you are on tells you what to fix next. Most Australian businesses we audit sit at level one or two.
| Level | What it looks like | Where it hurts |
|---|---|---|
| 0. Someone just knows | Prices live in one person's head | Quoting stops when they are on leave, and so does the business |
| 1. Templates | Word and Excel templates, filled in by hand | The typing is faster. The reading, pricing and chasing are not |
| 2. Price-book software | simPRO, Tradify and friends, priced from a catalogue | Standard jobs fly. Custom jobs fight the templates every day |
| 3. AI-drafted quoting | The system reads the enquiry and drafts the quote from your rules | This is where the hours come back. A person still checks every send |
| 4. The closed loop | Drafting plus follow-up: every open quote chased, win rates reported | Almost nothing. This is the goal, and few businesses are here |
Level three is where the time savings arrive, because reading, pricing and writing are the slow parts. Level four is where the win rate moves, because the quotes nobody followed up start getting answers. Getting from two to four is a build measured in weeks, not a transformation program.
Why does speed decide who wins the job?
Because the customer who emailed you also emailed two competitors, and the first detailed, accurate quote back frames the decision. Everyone else is then responding to it. Being first with a rough number is easy. Being first with a proper quote is what quote automation is for.
Speed is also why quoting is usually the first thing we automate in a business, ahead of invoicing or reporting. It is the one office job where minutes directly change revenue, not just costs.
Ask your own sales team how often the first quote back wins the job. Automating the quote is the cheapest way to be first.
What does the AI actually do in a quote?
It reads the enquiry the way a person would: the email, the attached plans, the photos from site, the scribbled list. It works out what is being asked for, asks for whatever is missing, prices the job from your rates and rules, and drafts the quote in your format and your tone.
Just as important is what it never does. It never invents a price: every number traces back to a rate or rule you gave it. It never sends without approval while you want a person checking, and for most clients that is forever. And it never guesses silently: when an enquiry does not fit the rules, it says so and hands the job to a person with the details already gathered.
What breaks quote automation in practice?
Not the AI. The things that break quote automation are the same things that quietly break manual quoting: stale supplier prices, messy units, and pricing knowledge that never got written down. We have built enough of these to know where the bodies are buried.
Stale price files. If supplier rates change monthly and your price list changes yearly, automation will quote your old margins faithfully. Part of every build is deciding where prices live and how they stay current.
The units mess. One supplier prices per lineal metre, another per square metre, the enquiry says "about 12 metres of fence". A person papers over this without noticing. A system has to handle it deliberately, and building that handling is half the value.
The one person who knows. If pricing lives in someone's head, the build starts with getting it out. That conversation is uncomfortable and valuable in equal measure, and the business ends up owning its own pricing knowledge for the first time.
Scanned and awful documents. Plans photographed at an angle, faxed order forms, twenty-page specs with the one relevant table on page seventeen. Modern AI reads most of this well, but a serious build tests on your ugliest real enquiries, not a clean demo.
Price creep after the quote. Winning the job at quoted rates and then paying more than you allowed for is a margin leak quoting alone cannot see. That is a purchasing problem, and we cover it separately under purchase order automation.
When should you not automate quoting?
When you send a handful of quotes a month, when every single price is a strategic judgement call, or when your pricing is in genuine chaos. Automation applies your rules consistently, so if the rules are wrong, it gets you to the wrong answer faster. Fix the price list first, and we will tell you if that is the case.
A low quote volume changes the maths too. If quoting costs your office two hours a week, there are better places to start, and the AI audit exists precisely to rank those honestly. Quoting is often the best first automation. It is not always.
Should you buy quoting software instead?
Sometimes, yes. Quoting software like simPRO or Quotient suits standard, repeatable trade jobs, and suits them well. If your pricing has options, drawings, site conditions or one rate card per client, the templates fight you every day. We wrote an honest guide to that decision: AI quoting software, buy or build.
| Off-the-shelf software | Custom automation | |
|---|---|---|
| Your pricing rules | You bend them to fit the templates | Built around how you actually price |
| Your systems | One more system to maintain | Works with your MYOB, spreadsheets and job system |
| The unusual quote | Jams, or gets forced through | Handed to a person, details gathered |
| Ownership | A subscription, forever | You own it outright |
Who have you built quote automation for?
At General Crane Services WA, crane quotes that took days now take minutes, priced from their own historical data. Their staff started the build themselves after our training, and we secured it and made it something the business could rely on. At Shimicoat, quoting runs inside the AI team that lets two people run a seven-figure coatings business.
At Better Looking Shutters, automated quoting was part of the office that doubled revenue on the same admin team. At PSG Plant Hire, machinery quotes are handled the moment a booking request lands, at any hour. All are WA businesses. We build from our Perth base in Ardross and deliver the same systems Australia-wide.
The size of the company matters less than you would think. A 300-person business still quotes through a five-person desk, so we pilot there, prove the number, then expand.
What about the quotes nobody follows up?
Most offices are too busy quoting to chase quoting. The same system that drafts your quotes follows every open one up, politely and on time, until it is won, lost or dead. For many businesses that follow-up is worth as much as the faster quoting itself, and it is the difference between level three and level four.
Follow-up is its own discipline once the job is won, too. Enquiries that never asked for a quote at all go through the same treatment on our lead follow-up page, and tenders, the formal cousin of the quote, get their own system entirely: see tender automation.
Do you own what we build?
Yes. You own everything we build. Fixed price or monthly, no lock-in. Your rates, your rules and your system, staying yours whether or not we ever do another job together.
How we build it
No big-bang project. We start with the job that pays back fastest and grow from there.
We learn how you price
Your rates, your rules, your old quotes and the exceptions. A short, honest look that also tells you if quoting is not the right place to start.
We build the quoting engine
The automation reads enquiries, gathers details and drafts quotes from your rules, live in weeks rather than months, and checked against your real past quotes.
Your team checks and sends
Every quote is reviewed by a person before it goes out, for as long as you want it that way. You see everything, and the odd jobs land with your people.
We add the follow-up
Every open quote gets chased on time until it is won or closed, and the numbers finally tell you your real win rate. You own all of it.
Common questions
Our pricing lives in a spreadsheet. Is that a problem?
It is the opposite of a problem. A pricing spreadsheet is a rulebook for how you quote, and that is exactly what we build the automation around. Your rates stay in your hands and the system prices the way you already do.
Every job we quote is custom. Can it still work?
Usually, yes. If a person can explain how they price a job, we can automate most of it, and the automation prepares the pack, gathers the details and drafts what it can. Work that genuinely needs judgement on every job stays with your people, and we will say so up front.
Does it connect to MYOB and our other systems?
Yes. We build around what you already run: MYOB, Xero, Microsoft 365, your job system and spreadsheets, and we can work alongside quoting tools like simPRO or Quotient where they already earn their keep. Quotes, jobs and invoices stay in step without re-typing, and you do not have to replace anything.
How long does quote automation take to build?
The first drafted quotes usually land within weeks, not months, and most systems are fully live within about 90 days. Before anything reaches a customer, we test the system against your real past quotes until it prices the way your best estimator does.
What does quote automation cost?
A fixed price agreed before we start, scoped so the build pays for itself. The honest answer depends on where your quote information comes from and how your pricing works, which is what the audit works out. We only build what will earn its keep.
What happens to our data?
Your rates and client data stay in your own systems and accounts. We build on OpenAI, Anthropic and Microsoft models under business terms, which means your data is not used to train public models. The full detail is on our security page.
Updated 3 August 2026
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How long does a quote sit in your office?
Tell us how quoting works in your business today, and we will show you what could be drafted, priced and chased automatically, in plain language, with no pitch.