Guides / Build Professional Trade Quotes in Minutes With an AI Bill of Materials
Build Professional Trade Quotes in Minutes With an AI Bill of Materials
Updated 2026-07-29
Quoting is where jobs are won — and where they usually slow you down
A slow, clunky quote costs jobs before the work even starts, but building an accurate one from scratch takes real time: pricing materials, estimating labor hours, and putting it in a format that looks professional enough to send. Trades Chaser's quote builder is designed to compress that from an hour to a few minutes without cutting corners on accuracy.
Start with an AI-suggested bill of materials
Type a plain description of the job — "replace a 40-gallon water heater" or "install three recessed lights in a kitchen" — and hit generate. The AI bill of materials pulls a suggested labor, materials, and equipment list straight into your quote's calculators, giving you a real starting point instead of a blank form.
- Nothing lands on the quote at a $0 price — every suggested line item still needs your real cost before it's included
- Edit, remove, or add line items freely; the AI list is a draft, not a locked-in estimate
- Refine it further with a quick back-and-forth chat if the first draft misses something specific to the job
Priced from your real numbers, every time
Set your hourly labor rate and materials markup once in Settings, and every quote you build afterward uses those real numbers automatically. The labor and materials calculators do the math — hours × your rate, materials cost × your markup — so every quote reflects what the job actually costs you, not a rough guess typed into a line item.
Compare part prices without leaving the quote
For a specific part, the AI part-identification and price-comparison tool (Enhanced plan) can identify a part from a description or photo and compare pricing across suppliers, so a material line item reflects a real, current price instead of last year's number from memory.
From quote to signed job in one flow
Once a quote looks right, send it for a digital signature through a no-login customer portal. The moment it's accepted, it becomes a job and an invoice automatically — no re-typing the same numbers into a second system.
Build your next quote
Whether you're quoting from a desk between jobs or from the truck right after a walkthrough, the same AI bill of materials and calculators are one tap away — quoting fast doesn't have to mean quoting sloppy.