Trade quoting software for installers

Trade quoting software, in practice, is three things: a structured item catalogue, current labour and material costs, and an automated path from enquiry to a quote PDF that only waits for sign-off. We do not sell a licensed product. We build that path as an automation on self-hosted n8n and PostgreSQL, connected to the software your business already runs.

Where the quoting process stalls

The bottleneck is rarely the arithmetic. It sits in the handover between site and office. On the site visit the technician records roof area, rafter spacing, the state of the consumer unit, space for the battery, plus photos. Back at the office someone turns that into a quote by copying an older one, swapping line items and checking prices against the wholesaler portal. A PV system with storage and a wallbox fills a long item list, and the same system data then has to be typed again into the grid connection application and the subsidy paperwork.

Two things go wrong. Enquiries wait until the office is quiet in the evening, and by then the customer has asked someone else. And when old material prices stay in a copied template, the margin quietly disappears into the job.

What the automation takes over

We work on the handovers, not on the trade itself. Enquiries from a form, a phone note or an email arrive as a structured record. Site measurements go into a fixed input form, photos included. Line items are proposed from your own catalogue, hourly rates and material mark-ups sit in one price table instead of being reinvented per quote. Material prices come from the lists your wholesaler provides (Datanorm, CSV, an API where one exists), and items whose purchase price moved are flagged before they reach a new quote. The quote PDF is generated, filed and put up for approval. Quotes with no reply resurface after a set period, with total, contact person and last touchpoint.

That last point applies only to people who asked for a quote themselves. In Austria, cold email to business addresses without prior consent is not permitted under § 174 TKG 2021, and we do not build it.

Sign-off stays with you

No quote leaves the business unseen. Pricing is a management decision, and an automation that sends unchecked figures to customers costs more than it saves. The automation prepares, your office decides. If a chatbot pre-qualifies enquiries, the person writing knows from the first message that they are dealing with an AI. The EU AI Act requires exactly that in Art. 50 from 2 August 2026; for us it is a built-in standard rather than an add-on.

What this page does not cover

This page is about the quoting chain: site data, calculation, quote PDF, follow-up. If it is still open which processes should be automated in your business and in which order, start with automation consulting instead.

Where the data sits

Calculation bases and customer enquiries are trade secrets, and we treat them that way. n8n runs self-hosted, quote and customer data sit in PostgreSQL or NocoDB on infrastructure in the EU, not in a US cloud. Error paths are defined: if a price list cannot be reached, you get an alert instead of a quote with wrong numbers.

The sensible first step is a free intro call about your quoting process. Bring one typical quote, and we will see where the time goes. Book a call.