How to send a quote from WhatsApp

It is 9 p.m. and 3 quotes are still unwritten: the hall bath from Tuesday, a 1920s bungalow on the east side, Wednesday’s kitchen, and the leak from this morning between jobs. Tuesday’s homeowner may already have another number. There is a way to do this in the truck. The voice note goes out as you climb in, the lines get read, and the PDF can leave before you pull away from the curb.

Here is how, on that 40 sq ft hall bath.

Is a WhatsApp message a quote?

Yes, once the homeowner receives a document, usually a PDF, and not a text on its own. WhatsApp carries the request and the file. The quote says who you are, the tasks, the quantities, the prices, the date, how long the number holds and how long the job takes. A message that says "hall bath, $8,200, I can start in 3 weeks" is how you start the draft. It is not what they sign.

Say this bath, at your own prices, comes to $6,080 before tax: demo of the cast-iron tub and the old tile, a walk-in shower, floor tile, wall tile, and the drain moved. At $18 a sq ft, 40 sq ft of floor is $720, and a $640 pan is reason enough to take money before you order it. You set the tax on each line. A bath in Columbus is not a bath in Phoenix, and I am not going to invent a rate that fits both. For a job priced in Belgium, the rate and the company number are in which quoting software to choose.

From a voice note or a message to a sent quote

SHAPP’s construction offer is available. Shappy drafts the quote on WhatsApp from what you say or write. The prices are the ones in your library. A sketch of the pan, dropped in the same thread, shows where the drain has to move, and the quote is still written from the note.

1. Describe the job to Shappy on WhatsApp

After the walkthrough, a voice note or a written message goes into the thread. Either one works. Say what a lead carpenter would need in order to price it the way you would: the address and the building, how it is used (house, apartment, shop), the work task by task with a quantity and a unit, the timing, how long you want the price to stay open, and what is outside the quote.

For Tuesday’s bath, the note can go in one pass.

House on the east side, hall bath about 40 sq ft, pull the cast-iron tub and the old tile, walk-in shower, floor tile and wall tile, about 90 sq ft of walls, drain to be moved, 3 weeks after they accept, price open 30 days, vanity supplied by the homeowner.

If they handed you a plan, a written brief or a sketch of the pan, that file goes in the same chat. Also say what you are not doing. An exclusion in the note, "vanity supplied by the homeowner", saves a line you would otherwise delete the next day, once the exact sentence is gone from memory. If a quantity is still open, say so in the same note: the wall tile gets corrected on the quote, not in a later text nobody will find.

2. Read the draft Shappy sends back

Shappy returns lines: task, quantity, unit, unit price. The library and the templates mean you are not retyping demo, tile or the drain on every bath, which is where the evening typing goes wrong when you are booking 2 walkthroughs a week. An extra shower screen, or a heated towel bar, sits on the quote as an option. They take it or they don’t. A discount, if you grant one, is a line on the document, not a side deal in a spreadsheet.

You set the tax on each line. One quote can carry more than one rate when the lines are not the same kind of work, and the rate that applies depends on where the house sits. You put down the one that matches this job.

You can start from a bathroom quote template, then replace the quantities with the ones from the walkthrough. The template keeps the tasks you usually price. The visit supplies that day’s figures. Template and visit meet on the quote, not in a separate file. Each trade has a quote template, the tile quote template included.

3. Check it before anything is sent

This is where the quote becomes yours. Give it about as long as the voice note, not the whole evening: the quantities match what you measured (the floor, not an extra zero), the units are the ones you mean, the prices come from the library or you changed them on purpose, the tax on each line is the one for this house, the date, the 30 days and the 3 weeks are written down, and so is the exclusion.

You edit on the quote. The previous version stays in the history, so you can see what moved between the draft you dictated in the truck and the version you send. If they ask for a change order the next day, Sunday night for the screen, you start from the version already sent, you change the line, and the older one stays dated. I would not price that change on the phone alone. The thread does not keep the margin, and the margin stays on your side of the quote, where they never see it.

When they accept, they sign by hand on the screen, including on a phone, and you sign too. That is handwriting on the document. A "sounds good" in the chat is not the acceptance.

4. Send it and get the acceptance

When the read is done, Shappy sends. They receive the PDF, a share link, or an email that leaves through your company’s own mail server. A CSV export is there if your bookkeeper or your lead works in a spreadsheet. The link opens the quote on a phone with no attachment. The PDF is the file they forward to an architect or a spouse. The email leaves from your company, not from a generic address. You pick the channel when you send, after the review.

They read, ask for a change, sign. Each revision stays dated. You are not rewriting the price in a fresh file with no trail. Quotes that are still open live in Sales. If they do not reply, the schedule and the 4 messages to copy are in how to follow up a quote on WhatsApp.

Deposits, retainage and invoices

A lot of shops take money down so they can order the pan, the tile or hold the crew. On $6,080, 30% is $1,824, enough for the $640 pan and a start on the tile, and not a loan for the job next door. In SHAPP you record the deposit and the retainage on the job. The deposit invoice is created from the quote, without typing the lines again.

An accepted quote opens 3 invoices, in job order: deposit, progress and final. All 3 are created from the quote. When the invoice is between Belgian businesses, Peppol e-invoicing is included. Your bookkeeper gets a PDF, a link or a CSV, and the money can be followed in SHAPP on Finance.

The progress invoice follows what is done, not a new price. You mark the work that is finished, the lines come from the quote they already accepted, and the final invoice closes the rest. Retainage, when you use it, stays on the job until you clear it. If your numbering or your retainage rules are not the default, Custom is where you adapt them without leaving the file.

What the assistant drafts

How a voice quote works, where the prices come from and what to read before you send are in AI quotes from a voice note.

Shappy writes the lines from the voice note or the message. The price, the rate, the timing and the moment they receive the file stay your decision. People you trust do this under your company’s permissions. The history keeps what changed between the version dictated after the walkthrough and the one signed the next day. The data is hosted in Europe, and the Security page says how that is handled.

Before the next walkthrough

Leave the visit with the voice note above, not with a promise made on the porch. Then read the quantities, the rate on each line, the prices and the timing. Send after that.

If you charge for the visit and the pricing, say so in the first WhatsApp message, before you pull the tape. A fee announced afterward gets argued in the thread. A fee written beforehand stays there.

SHAPP prices are company plans, not a price per person. Yearly billing is 10 months out of 12. To try the voice note on Tuesday’s bath, the trial starts from the pricing page.