Table of Contents

• Why slow quotes are costing you work
• What good quoting software actually does
• The best quoting software for Australian tradies (2026 comparison)
• How to choose the right one for your trade
• The bit most tradies miss, what happens after you hit send
• Wrap-up: pick one, set it up right, and get back on the tools
• Frequently asked questions

How about this? A sparky does a site visit on Friday, has a good chat with the customer, takes some notes, and drives off saying he’ll get the quote over shortly. Tuesday rolls around and the quote is still sitting in his head. Wednesday morning the customer rings to say thanks anyway, another electrician came out Saturday, quoted on the spot, and started on Monday.

That job was his. He did the site visit. He did the chat. He lost it at the paperwork stage, and he never even saw it happen.

The right quoting software for tradies fixes exactly that. You build the quote on your phone while you’re still parked in the driveway, hit send, and it’s in the customer’s inbox before you’ve pulled out onto the street.

Now let’s walk through your best options in plain English, how to pick the right software for your trade, and the bit nobody else talks about, which is what happens after you hit send. That last part is where most of the money leaks out.

Why slow quotes are costing you work

Let’s put some real numbers on it, because tradies respect numbers more than promises.

Say, you’re a plumber quoting ten jobs a week. You write them up in Word at night, when you’re stuffed from the day, so half of them slip to tomorrow, and tomorrow never comes. That’s two to three hours of admin a week just on quotes, and the quotes still land late. Meanwhile the research says tradies who respond within 24 hours win up to three times more work than the ones who take three days or longer. The customer isn’t waiting around. They ring three tradies, and the first decent quote in their inbox usually wins.

Now do the sums. If slow quotes cost you just two $3,000 jobs a month, that’s $72,000 a year walking out the door.

Not because your price was wrong. Not because your work isn’t good. The quote simply turned up after the customer had already said yes to someone else. I call it dropping a penny into the quote conversion opportunity. You promised Mrs Brown a quote on Wednesday. If it lands in her inbox Tuesday night, you’re a much better chance of Mrs Brown saying yes than if she has to ring you Friday asking where it is.

What good quoting software actually does

A lot of blokes hear “quoting software” and picture another complicated system they’ll have to fight with at 9pm. It’s simpler than that. Good quoting software does four things, and if it does them well, that’s all you need.

Here’s the whole workflow, start to finish:

• You finish the site visit and open the app on your phone before you leave.
• You tap in the job using your saved labour rates and materials, so there’s no recalculating from scratch.
• You hit send and the customer gets a professional quote by email or text, with a button to accept and pay a deposit.
• The customer taps yes and the quote turns into a booked job in your calendar.
• The job gets done and the accepted quote becomes the invoice, without you re-typing a single line.

That’s it. You tap a few things, it emails the customer, they tap yes, done. No Word doc, no cutting and pasting from the last quote, no maths on the back of a receipt.

The price book, where the time savings actually live

Here’s the bit most tradies skip, and it’s the difference between the software saving you hours or annoying you into giving up.

The price book is where you store your standard jobs, labour rates, and materials with your margins already baked in. Set it up properly and quoting a hot water replacement takes three minutes instead of thirty, because the app already knows what you charge for labour, what the unit costs, and what your markup is. Skip the setup and you’ll be typing every quote from scratch forever, which is exactly what you were doing in Word.

My advice is simple. Spend one full day getting your price book right before you quote a single job through the app. Load your ten most common jobs, your labour rates, and your standard materials. That one day pays you back every single week after.

Mobile quoting, send it before you leave the driveway

This is the part that wins jobs. You walk the job with the customer, get back in the ute, and build the quote on your phone while it’s all fresh. Hit send before you’ve pulled out of the street. The customer’s still standing in the kitchen talking about it with her husband, and your quote is already in her inbox. Nobody else is beating that.

One thing worth knowing before you sign up. The app quality between iOS and Android is genuinely uneven across these platforms. ServiceM8 is built iOS first, so if you’re an Android bloke, look hard at Tradify instead. Check the app store reviews for your phone, not just the website.

The best quoting software for Australian tradies (2026 comparison)

There are dozens of these tools around. Most tradies only need to look at five. Every one of these handles GST and connects to Xero or MYOB, which I’d treat as non-negotiable. If a tool can’t talk to your accounting software, walk away, no matter how good the demo looks.

Tool	Best for	Price per month	Xero and MYOB	Mobile app
ServiceM8	Sole traders and small teams	Free to $109	Yes	iOS first
Tradify	Fast quoting in the field	From $35	Yes	iOS and Android
Fergus	Material-heavy trades	Mid range	Yes	iOS and Android
Simpro	Teams of 5 or more, commercial work	$200 plus	Yes	iOS and Android
Buildxact	Builders doing custom residential	From $149	Yes	iOS and Android

ServiceM8, best for sole traders and small teams

ServiceM8 is Australia’s most popular tradie app, and for good reason. You can build a quote on your phone, the customer can accept and pay a deposit online, and there’s a genuinely free Starter plan that covers five jobs a month, which is handy if you want to test it on real work before spending a cent. It’s built iOS first, so Android users should read the next one. Pricing runs from free up to $109 a month. For most sole traders it’s the obvious starting point.

Tradify, best for speed in the field

Tradify is built for one thing, getting quotes out fast. The pre-loaded templates mean a complete quote in under five minutes on site, which makes it a great fit for sparkies and plumbers doing lots of repeat job types. The iOS and Android apps are both solid, so it’s the safer pick if your team’s on mixed phones. It’s $35 a month after a 14-day trial.

Fergus, best for material-heavy trades

If materials dominate your margins, plumbing, electrical, HVAC, Fergus is worth a hard look. The supplier integrations pull live pricing into your quotes, so you’re quoting off actual material costs instead of last year’s price list. There’s more setup work upfront than the others, fair warning, and it pays off most on higher-value jobs where a wrong material price can wipe out your margin.

Simpro, best for larger teams and commercial work

Simpro is a step up in both power and price. It handles variations, phased cost breakdowns, and full job costing, the stuff you need when you’re running a team of five or more on multi-stage commercial projects. For a sole tradie it’s overkill and expensive, so don’t let a salesperson talk you into it. Expect $200 plus a month.

Buildxact, best for builders doing custom residential

Buildxact is designed for builders rather than service tradies. The estimating and takeoff features are strong for custom home builds, where you’re pricing a whole project rather than a callout. Pricing starts around $149 a month, and it’s built for project work, not service calls, so match it to how you actually operate.

How to choose the right one for your trade

Don’t overthink it. Three questions get you there:

• Are you a sole trader or running a team? Sole trader, start with ServiceM8 or Tradify. If you’re a team of five plus doing commercial work, look at Simpro.
• Do materials dominate your margins, or is it mostly labour? Material-heavy, Fergus earns its setup time. Mostly labour, Tradify’s speed wins.
• Does it need to talk to Xero or MYOB? Yes it does, whatever you tell yourself. All five above do, so this one just rules out the cheap unknowns.

Then start a free trial and run it on real jobs, not test data. Quote your next five actual jobs through the app. You’ll know within a fortnight whether it fits how you work.

The bit most tradies miss, what happens after you hit send

Here’s where I’m going to tell you something the software companies won’t.

The quote leaving your phone is the start of the job, not the end of it. Somebody has to follow it up two or three days later when the customer’s gone quiet. Somebody has to chase the accepted quote through to a locked-in start date.

Somebody has to raise the invoice the day the job’s done, not at 11 o’clock that night. The software can automate some of that, and most tradies never set it up. Even the ones who do find the admin still leaks time, because a chunk of it needs a human.

A plumber I know up on the Northern Beaches is a perfect example. When my team first suggested chasing up his sent quotes, he was dead against it. He reckoned it would put customers off. He’ll happily tell you now it’s been one of the best things we ever pushed him on.

Quotes he’d mentally written off came back as booked jobs, just because somebody politely followed up. Most of your competitors send the quote and forget it exists. Following up is the easiest money in your business, and almost nobody does it.

“Most tradies never follow up a quote. The ones who do are picking up the jobs everyone else forgot about.”

Automating quote follow-up inside the software

Start with what the software gives you. Most of these tools can fire off an automatic text or email nudge 48 hours after a quote goes out, something simple like “just checking you got the quote, sing out if you’ve got questions.”

They’ll also show you a quote status dashboard, so you can see in ten seconds what’s open, what’s accepted, and what’s expired. Turn both on. It takes twenty minutes and it’s the closest thing to free money in the whole system. While you’re in there, get across your numbers too, because your quote conversion rate is one of the few figures that tells you the truth about your business.

When you need a human, not an app

Some customers need a phone call, not a text. Commercial clients. Bigger jobs. The repeat customer who’s been with you for years and deserves better than an automated nudge. An app can’t answer a question about the quote, can’t negotiate a start date, and can’t hear the hesitation in someone’s voice and sort it out on the spot.

That’s the work my team does every day. We answer the calls, chase the quotes, and book the jobs straight into your calendar while you stay on the tools. The plumber I mentioned doesn’t touch any of it anymore. He wakes up, looks at his jobs, and rocks up to work. If you’re flat out on the tools, this is exactly the kind of work a good admin team takes off your plate. The quoting software handles the paperwork. We handle the people.

Wrap-up: pick one, set it up right, and get back on the tools

Slow quotes lose work, simple as that. Pick a tool that fits your trade, spend a day on the price book, and start sending quotes before you leave the driveway. That fixes the front end.

The back end is the follow-ups, the chasing, and the invoicing, and that’s where the time still leaks, no matter what software you’re running. You didn’t get your ticket so you could do paperwork. I was a tradie who tried to do every part of the job myself, the quotes included, and I found out the hard way that being good on the tools is only part of running a business. My team handles the admin side for tradies all over Australia, and the pricing is laid out plainly, with no lock-in contract.

If you want to talk about getting your quotes out faster and your evenings back, give me a ring.

No hard sell, no contract. Just a chat with a former tradie who gets it.

Greg, 0412 831 401

Frequently asked questions