Guide
The quote you dictate on site
The moment you know the most about a job is when you are standing in it. Two hours later half the details are gone — and that is exactly when the quote usually gets written.
Why the evening is the worst possible moment
Between the visit and the desk there are three other jobs, a supplier who never called back, and dinner. What is left when you sit down is a note on a scrap of paper and a gut feeling.
What gets lost is not trivial: the ceiling height, the impossible rear access, the panel that is already full, the flashing you noticed. Those are precisely the lines that separate a margin from a fix at your own expense.
What dictating changes
You talk the way you would talk to an apprentice: what needs doing, in what order, with quantities where you know them. You take two or three photos of what matters.
The transcript is structured by the AI against your price library. The result is not a block of text: it is a quote with lines, quantities, prices, margin and tax.
- Recording with pause and resume: you stop when the client starts talking.
- Photos taken during the visit stay attached to the capture.
- A capture made in a basement sends itself once the signal comes back.
What the AI does not do — and this is the important part
A tool that invents a plausible quantity is more dangerous than one that offers none: the invented number looks right, and it survives review.
- A quantity that was not dictated becomes an open QUESTION, never an estimate.
- A price comes from your library. Outside your trade, the AI says so and prices nothing.
- Lines it is unsure about are flagged "to check" before anything is sent.
- Nothing reaches the client until you have reviewed it: review is not an optional step.
How long it actually takes
A one-minute dictation gives you a quote to review. Review is what takes the time — checking quantities, adjusting two prices, answering the open questions — and that is as it should be: that is estimating, the part no tool does for you.
What disappears is the data entry: retyping the description, hunting for a price, recalculating tax, fixing the layout. That is where the evenings were going.
FAQ
What if I have an accent, or mix French and English?
Transcription handles both languages and regional accents. Trade vocabulary — flashing, fascia, panel, breaker — is part of the context given to the AI. What it does not understand it does not guess: it flags it.
Does the client hear my dictation?
Never. The recording and your notes stay internal. The client receives the final quote, the one you reviewed and sent.
Can I fix the quote afterwards?
Yes, while it is a draft: lines, quantities, prices, options, published photos. Once sent it is frozen — it is the document the client received — and any change goes through a change order.
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