AI for quotes

AI helps you prepare the quote from what the customer asks for: it understands the job, breaks it down into line items, applies your prices if you give them to it and writes up the document in a good tone. You provide the rates and have the last word; it takes away the work of putting it together and writing it up, which is usually the part that gets put off the most.

The trick is to give it your price list and a previous quote as a model. Without that, the AI makes up "reasonable" prices that aren't yours, and does so with all the calm in the world. Something else that's confusing: language models aren't calculators and can get sums wrong, so do the maths in a spreadsheet or always check it. Also review deadlines, validity, taxes and conditions. A quote isn't an invoice, but what you promise in it commits you to the customer, whether you wrote it or a machine did.

How I do it in a small business, what data I give the AI and which review I never skip I explain in "Invoices and quotes with the help of artificial intelligence". If you want to try, start with a quote you've already sent: ask the AI to redo it from the original request and compare. You'll quickly see where it gets it right and where it makes things up.