Quotes followed up and booked in

A sent quote is not work. It only becomes work when the customer says yes and the job is in the diary. Between those two points sits the part most small firms do badly: the follow-up. Quotes go out, a few come back, and the rest drift. This tour shows the office at a sample plumbing and heating firm at two in the afternoon, going through the quotes board, recording one customer's yes and booking the job in.

What is the quotes board?

The quotes board is the Quotes page laid out in columns, one for each stage. Every quote is a card showing its number, the customer, the job and the total. Moving a card from one column to the next is how a quote moves on.

To the right, a drawer opens when you book an accepted quote in. The sample board shows a kitchen tap, a bathroom suite, a shower pump and a water heater at different stages.

Step by step

1. Open Quotes and switch to the board. You see the three columns side by side. Start at the left: the top of Not sent shows a count such as "1 not sent". Anything here has not reached the customer, however finished it looks.

2. Read the Waiting for the customer column. Each card shows whether it is Sent or Seen by customer. Seen tells you the customer has opened it. A quote seen yesterday and not answered is the best one to ring about today; the customer is thinking about it.

3. Look for Past its date. One quote in the sample is marked Past its date. Its Valid until date has gone. Do not just move it to Accepted if the customer rings now. Write a new quote with current prices, which takes a minute and protects your margin.

4. Ring the customers who have seen their quote. Keep it short: "Did the quote make sense? Any questions?" Most people who have not replied simply have not got round to it. In the sample, the customer with the kitchen tap rings in to say yes before you get to her.

5. Record the yes by moving the card. Drag her quote, Q-0219 for the kitchen tap, from Waiting for the customer into Accepted. EasyTaskr asks once to check you meant to do it, then records her answer. This is how staff record an answer given by phone, in person or by message.

6. Choose Book it in. On the accepted quote, press Book it in. The drawer opens with the quote's number and job, "Quote Q-0219 · kitchen tap", and asks for the Day of the work.

7. Pick the day. Agree it with the customer while they are on the phone if you can. In the sample the job goes in for Friday 9 October 2026. The drawer explains what happens next: the quote becomes a confirmed booking on that day.

8. Check the booking landed. The job now appears in Bookings as a confirmed booking for that day. On the morning of the work it shows in Today's bookings on Home, with no separate step to remember.

9. Glance at the Accepted count. The Accepted column shows how many were accepted this month, 7 in the sample. Over a few months that number tells you whether your quoting is getting better or worse.

Why does following up quotes pay?

Because the work has already been done. You visited, or at least listened and priced it. Every quote that drifts without an answer is unpaid time. A short call to a customer who has seen a quote wins more work than a cheaper price would, because the most common reason for no reply is that the customer is busy, not that they went elsewhere.

A simple way to judge your quoting is to compare quotes sent with quotes accepted over a month. If most quotes are accepted, your prices may be lower than they need to be. If very few are, look at the wording, the speed and the price. The pricing guide walks through how to set prices you are comfortable defending.

A worked example

Say the firm sends 20 quotes in a month and 7 are accepted. That is 35%. If a ten-minute follow-up call on each of the 13 unanswered quotes wins back just 3 more, that is 10 accepted out of 20, or 50%. At an average job of £126 that is an extra £378 of work for a little over two hours of calls. The figures are an example, but the sum is the reason the board exists.

Tips for a tidy quotes board

• Follow up in one sitting. Set a fixed time each afternoon for Waiting for the customer. Little and often beats a Friday panic.
• Ring the Seen ones first. They have read the price, so the conversation is about timing, not cost.
• Re-quote rather than stretch. A quote marked Past its date should be replaced, not quietly honoured.
• Book the day while the customer is on the phone. An accepted quote with no day is easy to forget.
• Keep Not sent empty by the end of the day. A finished quote that never left is the most avoidable lost job.

Common mistakes

• Treating Accepted as booked. It is not booked until you press Book it in and pick the day.
• Moving a card to Accepted on a "probably". Only record a clear yes; otherwise the Accepted count stops meaning anything.
• Letting quotes sit in Waiting for weeks. After a fortnight, ring once more, then let it go.
• Forgetting the money after the job. Booked work still has to be billed and paid. The invoices guide covers getting paid on time, and the cash flow guide explains why it matters.

What to do next

The booked job will show on Home on the day of the work, and the engineer will write it up on its job card, as the job card tour shows. At the end of the day, the reviews tour shows replying to what customers wrote after their work was done.

The quotes, customers and dates in this tour are from a sample business.