How to Write an Estimate On Site From Your Phone

The back gutter sags over the patio where 4 hangers let go, and the homeowner, standing in the driveway, asks for a number before you get in the truck. They want it before you leave. Another gutter company is coming to look at the same job tomorrow morning at 8, and an estimate you type tonight gets there after theirs or beside it.

How do you write an estimate on site from your phone?

Walk the job before the tape comes out, ask the 3 questions that move the price, then measure in an order you keep from house to house. Price it in the truck from your own rates. On the gutter job, send the estimate before you drive off, in the 10 minutes after the last measurement.

The gutter job is a 2-story house. 52 linear feet of 5-inch aluminum gutter, 26 along the front eave and 26 along the back, 2 downspouts at 20 feet each, and the hangers on the sag, 4 of them, already inside the installed price. The side yard is narrow, so the ladder goes up on a standoff, off the gutter and off the siding. These are the contractor’s own prices, before sales tax: tear-off and haul-away at $2 a foot, the 5-inch gutter installed at $11 a foot, downspout installed at $9 a foot. The roofing quote template already carries the roof lines. Today’s lengths replace the ones saved in the template.

Stop at the neighbor’s gutter. Name the end cap or the outlet while you are looking at it. If the measurement runs past their gutter, the estimate includes footage you will not install on this house.

On the walk: the order that makes the phone estimate possible

Leave the tape for now. The first loop is for the sag, the gate, the outlet, the side yard and where the truck can stand, because each of those can change a line. If you give a price before you know how you will reach the back eave, the lengths can be right and the access wrong. On Monday the standoff will not fit the side yard, you still have to get up there, and the rental you left off the estimate comes out of the job. I ask while the homeowner is at the gate. In the truck they are already inside, and fixing the access over the phone goes badly.

Who keeps the old metal comes first. Aluminum has scrap value, plenty of homeowners know it, and the answer decides the haul-away line. If they want the pile, you take the gutter down and leave it. If they want it gone, you haul it, and the rate of $2 a foot stays as priced below.

Then the truck. Can it get close enough for the ladder, and will the standoff clear the neighbor’s flower bed? Walk the gate before you promise the setup. If the side yard will not take the standoff, price the back from a taller ladder setup or a rented lift, or leave the back run off the estimate. I do not save that question for a call at 9 p.m.

The back downspout ties into the storm line or dumps into a rain barrel, and a barrel changes the outlet height, so the length or an elbow changes with it. Until the homeowner shows you the connection, I do not lock the length. I tell them what time the estimate will go out, 6 in the evening or 8 the next morning, and I do not give a total yet.

Only then the tape, always in the same direction: front eave from the street corner toward the far end, back eave the same way, downspouts from the elbow under the gutter to the splash block, outlets last. The voice note must not say "the other side", or both runs swap and the total still looks tidy.

A photo of the sag and a photo of the outlet are there so you remember them, the same way a sketch or a PDF from the homeowner is. The estimate is built from the measurements and from what you said.

Before the tape goes away, these 6 items are on the phone.

• Write the front run, then the back run, then each downspout, always in the same direction, so the voice note cannot swap them.
• Write who keeps the old metal, because that answer keeps or kills the haul-away line.
• Walk the gate and where the truck can stand, or the access you price will describe a different job.
• Write where the back downspout lands, storm line or rain barrel, before you lock its length.
• Photograph the sagging hangers and the outlet, and leave the rest of the roof alone.
• Tell the homeowner the hour the estimate will go out, before you close the gate.

If the fascia is soft under the sag, I stop the total. The replacement has turned into a board you still have to open, and a number given in the driveway would commit you to lumber nobody has seen. Say so while the homeowner is standing there. The estimate goes out the next morning, once that board is open, with no total given in the driveway.

The gutter estimate, line by line

The elbows are in the price. The downspouts come to 40 feet because each drop is 20. Elbows, the outlet and the splash block sit inside the installed rate, and the line says so, so the supply ticket cannot add an elbow the homeowner never saw. The 4 new hangers stay inside the installed gutter price, because they asked for a replacement.

The arithmetic is 3 products: 52 × $2 makes $104 of tear-off, 52 × $11 makes $572 of gutter installed, and 40 × $9 makes $360 of downspout. $104 plus $572 makes $676, and $676 plus $360 makes $1,036 before tax.

Gutter guards stay out of that total. If the homeowner wants them, price them by the foot on the length already measured, and let them keep the line or drop it. Other trades sit with the quote templates. If the standoff will not sit and you rent a lift the morning of the job, that rental comes out of the $1,036 unless the line was on the estimate before you send.

In SHAPP, you set sales tax on each line, and the estimate carries a sales tax line. The rate depends on where the job is.

3 ways to build the estimate on your phone

This replacement can leave the phone 3 ways, and each one costs time or a risk of its own. The comparison of quoting software for contractors sets the products next to each other. I am not ranking them.

Sources: public pages of CoreQuote, EstimateBook, Conduit and BuildWell, read on November 10, 2026.

I use the library on a service call of 3 lines, a hanger, an outlet, a joint, because I know those rates cold and talking would take longer than tapping. A remodel of 15 lines, I dictate. A finger drops a line once the list gets long, and the voice note keeps the order of the walk, so the numbers get read before anything goes out. When something is still hidden, siding you have not opened, a rafter tail that looks soft, I do not put a total in the driveway. I tell them what time the estimate will go out.

Should you give the price on the spot?

Say the number when the job is known, not while a question is still open. On the gutter job the 3 answers are in. They want the old metal gone, the side yard takes the standoff, the back downspout hits the storm line: I say the written total, and the file goes out before the engine starts. If they are still choosing between the storm line and a rain barrel, or the fascia is soft, I say 6 in the evening, or 8 the next morning. The figure stays on the phone until the line is real.

Saying the number in the driveway opens the haggling right there, in the yard, often against a figure that is not a line yet. They ask what happens if they keep the scrap, and you knock $104 off the top while you are standing there, without rewriting the tear-off. I write it down. I read the total after that, and the PDF uses that number, with no figure from memory. A discount, if you give one, gets its own line on the estimate.

They remember the number they heard. If the PDF shows a different one, they call about the difference, even when the PDF is the number you meant. If they go quiet after the file is out, the schedule and the messages are in following up a quote on WhatsApp.

Getting it signed on site

The homeowner and the company both sign on the screen, on the phone that was already out for the measurements. I hold the truck for Thursday once that file is signed. A yes in the driveway will not reserve the date.

A homeowner who signs at the house often gets time to cancel. In the US, the FTC Cooling-Off Rule gives 3 business days on a sale of $25 or more made at the buyer’s home. The UK and Ireland give 14 days. State home-improvement laws can add rules on top of that. On this job I hold the material order during those days unless they have asked, in writing on the estimate, to start sooner. Check the rule where you work. Ask your accountant or your trade group.

The deposit goes on the estimate, enough to cover the gutter stock and the haul-away, and the deposit invoice goes out once the cooling-off period is over. SHAPP creates that deposit invoice from the estimate. Peppol e-invoicing is included when the invoice is between Belgian businesses.

No signal in the basement or on the roof

The rain barrel connection is often in a basement, and the roof has no more signal than that room does. Record the voice note anyway.

The message waits on the phone and leaves when the signal comes back, usually as the truck door shuts, even if you recorded it in a basement. A second note, sent because the first one seemed lost, often disagrees with the first on an elbow. Keep one, and price from that note, without rebuilding the downspout from memory at 9 p.m.

Spoken fast, 20 and 26 are easy to mix up. AI voice quotes for contractors covers how to say quantities so they come through right. The feet come out in the walk’s sequence, once, in the truck.

With Shappy, the estimate leaves from the driveway

In the truck, the voice note goes to Shappy on WhatsApp: the lengths in the order you measured, tear-off hauled away, the standoff, guards as an option. Shappy pulls the prices from the price library. Read every line. That includes the margin, which the customer never sees. On the tear-off, the quantity has to be the gutter run. If the downspout length gets typed there instead, the total still looks normal and the margin is the line that looks wrong. Nothing goes out until you approve it.

The PDF or the share link follows that approval, through the construction quote on WhatsApp. How the voice note becomes the file, on a job other than these gutters, is the path in how a voice note becomes a quote.

On the next visit, send the estimate before you start the engine. To try this on the next gutter or roofing estimate, the trial starts from the pricing page.