Quoting Automation Setup Checklist for Australian Trades Businesses
Automated quoting means a trades business can receive an enquiry, send a professional quote, follow up on it automatically, and convert it to a scheduled job — without anyone in the office manually handling each step. In Australia, where plumbing, electrical, landscaping, pest control, and HVAC businesses still run most of this by hand, getting this setup right is one of the fastest ways to improve revenue without adding staff.
This checklist covers the full setup sequence: from choosing your platform to training your team. It's built for Australian trades businesses, so the software recommendations, rate card logic, and compliance references all apply here — not to some US market that works differently.
This checklist is part of Module 8 of the Playbook, which covers the first 90 days of owning a trades business and how to use AI to run it more efficiently.
Why most trades businesses are still doing this manually (and what it costs them)
When you buy a trades business, the quoting process is almost always one of the first things you find broken. The previous owner knew the prices in his head; the crew sent photos of handwritten quotes; follow-up happened when someone remembered to call.
A landscaping business I reviewed recently was sending around 25 quotes per week and converting about 30% of them. Not bad, you might think — until you look at the quote turnaround time, which averaged 3.5 days. Competitors were getting quotes out in a few hours. The same business, after implementing basic quoting automation, saw its conversion rate climb to 48% in 90 days. Same prices. Same crew. Just faster and more professional.
The math is straightforward. If you're sending 25 quotes a week at an average of $2,500 each, a 15-percentage-point improvement in conversion is an extra $97,500 in monthly revenue. The software costs $150 per month (which, relative to the revenue impact, is slightly embarrassing to even mention).
For more on the mechanics of how to automate quoting in a trades business, including which software to use and how AI layers add value on top, that article covers the full picture.
Before you start: what you need to have ready
Before configuring any software, get three things sorted:
Your rate cards. You need to know what you charge for common jobs — by labour hour, by job type, by material. If the previous owner carried this in his head, you'll need to extract it through conversations and invoice history before you can build templates.
Your margin targets. What gross margin do you need per job type? This determines whether your rate cards are actually profitable. If you don't know this yet, the First 90 Days Action Plan Template has a section on pulling this from the existing financials.
Your common job types. What are the 10-15 jobs you quote most frequently? These become your core templates. Everything else can be custom-quoted as you go.
Once you have these three things, the setup below takes two to three days for a small business.
What's in the full checklist
The gated checklist below covers six phases of implementation:
- Platform selection — which software suits your business size and job type
- Initial configuration — rate cards, job types, customer fields, GST settings
- Quote templates — building the 10-15 templates that cover 80% of your jobs
- Automation setup — delivery triggers, follow-up sequences, acceptance workflows
- Scheduling integration — connecting accepted quotes to job scheduling
- AI enhancements — adding ChatGPT-assisted descriptions, supplier price feeds, automatic photo-to-quote
It also includes a one-page software comparison table across ServiceM8, Tradify, Fergus, and Simpro — matched against business size and job type.
If you're working through your broader first 90 days after buying a small business, this checklist fits into the "operations modernisation" phase in weeks two through four.
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