Quoting software for tradesmen
Quoting software for tradesmen that writes the first draft for you
Describe the job in plain English and get a priced, branded PDF you can send before you have left the drive. Then keep a dated record of what you sent, when they opened it and when they said yes, which matters more than most traders have been told.
- 14 days
- The cancellation period on a job agreed at a customer's kitchen table
- 12 months
- How far that period stretches if the cancellation notice was never given
- £42
- The payment below which the off-premises rules do not apply at all
The quote is not the contract. The acceptance is
A quote is an offer. Nothing legal turns on the PDF. What matters is the moment the customer accepts it, and specifically WHERE everyone was standing when they did, because that decides which set of rules the job falls under.
| What it means | 14 day cancellation right? | |
|---|---|---|
| Off-premises | Agreed with you and the customer both physically there, somewhere that is not your business premises. Their kitchen, their driveway, the job itself. | Yes, 14 days |
| Distance | Agreed without the two of you being in the same place, under an organised distance selling scheme. Quoted and accepted entirely by email or phone. | Yes, 14 days |
| On-premises | Neither of the above. The customer came to your premises and agreed it there. | No cancellation right under these regulations |
The 14 days, and how they become 12 months
A customer who agreed at home can cancel within 14 days. That much is reasonably well known. What is not is what happens when the cancellation information was never handed over: the window does not quietly close.
The customer accepts, in their home
An off-premises contract exists from that moment. Not when you start, not when you invoice.
14 days
The cancellation period, running from the day the contract is entered into for a services contract.
If you never gave the cancellation information
The period does not quietly close. It runs on, and ends 12 months after the day it would otherwise have ended.
If you give the information late
The period ends 14 days after the customer receives it, provided that happens within 12 months of when the original 14 days began.
Starting work before the 14 days are up
Most jobs cannot wait a fortnight, and the regulations do not require them to. They require the customer to ask, properly, and they are specific about what properly means.
- The trader must not begin supplying the service before the cancellation period ends unless the consumer has made an express request.
- For an off-premises contract, that request has to be on a durable medium.
- Where the service was not supplied in response to a request made that way, the consumer bears no cost for it.
- The same applies where the required information about cancellation was not given in the first place.
Leaving the notice out is a criminal offence
The consequences above are civil. There is a criminal one as well, and it is the part that surprises people most.
Prosecutions of ordinary tradespeople for this are not common, and this page is not suggesting otherwise. It is worth knowing that the obligation has teeth rather than being a piece of paperwork nobody minds about.
What the law says about the work itself
Separate from cancellation, the Consumer Rights Act 2015 puts three terms into every consumer services contract whether or not anybody wrote them down.
| Where | What it requires | |
|---|---|---|
| Care and skill | section 49 | The trader must perform the service with reasonable care and skill. |
| Price, where none was agreed | section 51 | The consumer must pay a reasonable price for the service, and no more. This is the one that decides an argument about an unpriced job, and it does not decide it in your favour. |
| Time, where none was agreed | section 52 | The trader must perform the service within a reasonable time. |
Where My Job Goblin fits
None of the above is software. It is the shape of the risk a sole trader carries every time they quote at somebody's kitchen table. What the app does is make the quote quick enough that you actually send it, and keep a dated record of what you sent.
Price a job
What the customer is charged for them. They stay on their own line and are never folded into labour, so nobody has to guess what your day is worth.
Priced at 45p a mile on its own line, rather than quietly absorbed into the rate.
The quote
£502.8
What your customer sees, itemised the way they see it.
This is the real pricing engine, running in your browser. No account, nothing sent anywhere, and the same function that prices every quote in the app.
Plain English to a priced quote
Describe the job. The AI suggests line items, materials, labour hours and a sensible UK price, and you edit every one of them before it goes anywhere. It removes the blank page, not the judgement.
Your rates, not a generic markup
Your hourly rate, day rate and materials markup feed the suggestions, so the quotes get closer to how you actually price rather than to how software thinks you should.
A dated record of what happened
When it was sent, when the customer opened it, when they approved or declined it, and what the document said at the time. That record is worth having for reasons well beyond tidiness.
Quote to invoice in one tap
Line items, customer and totals carry across. Numbered, branded, sent. No retyping the job you already described once.
Just as usefully, what it does not do:
- It does not produce the statutory cancellation notice or the model cancellation form, and it does not check whether your terms carry them.
- Sending a quote through it is not a compliance step. It is a record that you sent a quote.
- It does not tell you whether a given job is an off-premises contract. That turns on where you were standing, and no software can see that.
What it works out once the quotes are in it
Quoting fast is worth something on its own. Quoting fast and knowing whether it worked is worth considerably more, and it is the half most job software leaves out entirely.
| What it tells you | Shown once you have | |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue per available working day | Money received in a period divided by the working days that period actually held, taken from the working pattern the trader sets. The trades equivalent of a hotel's revenue per available room, and it decomposes the same way: effective day rate multiplied by utilisation. | 5 available working days and at least one booked day in the window |
| Why revenue moved | The change in invoiced revenue against the previous 30 days, split into ranked contributing factors: how many jobs were invoiced against what the typical job was worth, with quotes sent as upstream context. | 2 invoices in each period and a change of at least 15 per cent |
| Quote speed against win rate | Whether quotes the trader sends within 24 hours convert better than the ones they send later, measured on their own decided quotes rather than on a general rule of thumb. | 3 decided quotes in each bucket and a gap of at least 10 percentage points |
| Margin per job over time | One point per won job, priced against its materials and subcontractor cost, plotted by job date and split weekday against weekend so an out-of-hours premium can be checked rather than assumed. | 5 won jobs with a recorded cost, and 3 in each of the weekday and weekend buckets before the split is drawn; jobs with no recorded cost are excluded, not counted as zero |
| Quote win rate | The share of decided quotes that were accepted, shown with a Wilson score interval and the sample size, so the figure carries the range it could really be. | 10 decided quotes |
| Utilisation | Days booked against days available. Deliberately uncapped, so a weekend worked reads as over 100 per cent rather than being flattened to a full week. | a working pattern set, and 5 available working days in the window |
| Time to get paid | A value-weighted days-sales-outstanding figure, so one large invoice paid late moves it more than several small ones do. | 3 paid invoices |
| Typical job value | The median value of a won job, not the mean, so a single unusually large job does not redefine what typical means. | 3 won jobs with a recorded price |
| Time from quote to job | The median gap between sending a quote and the work starting, which is the lead time a trader is really working to when they fill a diary. | 3 won quotes with both dates recorded |
On a quoting page the one to watch is quote speed against win rate. It is the only figure here that tells you whether getting the quote out the same day is actually winning you work, or whether it just feels productive.
Sources
Every figure on this page comes from one of these. They are dated because they change.
- The Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013, regulation 5The definitions of off-premises, distance and on-premises contracts.
- The same Regulations, regulation 7The exclusions, including that this Part does not apply to an off-premises contract where the payment is not more than £42.
- The same Regulations, regulation 19The criminal offence of failing to give the cancellation information on an off-premises contract, and the fine on summary conviction.
- The same Regulations, regulations 30 and 31The 14 day cancellation period, and what happens to it when the information is late or never given.
- The same Regulations, regulation 36Beginning work inside the cancellation period, the express request on a durable medium, and when the consumer bears no cost at all.
- Consumer Rights Act 2015, sections 49, 51 and 52Reasonable care and skill, a reasonable price where none was agreed, and performance within a reasonable time.
- Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, section 85Why a level 5 fine is unlimited in England and Wales, in force from 12 March 2015.
This page describes what the regulations say. It is not legal advice, and it is not a statement about your business or any particular job: whether a contract is off-premises, and what information you are required to give, turns on facts a web page cannot see. Check the sources above and take advice where it matters. Last reviewed 25 August 2026.
Send the quote before you have left the drive
Free to start, no card needed, and the free tier runs whole jobs end to end rather than showing you a locked screen.
Frequently asked questions
Does the 14 day cancellation right really apply to my quotes?
It depends on where the customer accepted, not on what you called the document. A contract concluded with you and the customer both physically present, somewhere that is not your business premises, is an off-premises contract, and those carry a 14 day cancellation period. A quote accepted at the kitchen table is the ordinary case. The rules do not apply where the payment is not more than £42.
What happens if I never gave them a cancellation notice?
Two things, and neither is small. The cancellation period does not close after 14 days: it ends 12 months after the day it would otherwise have ended, or 14 days after you finally give the information if that lands within those 12 months. Separately, failing to give the cancellation information on an off-premises contract is a criminal offence, punishable on summary conviction by a fine which is unlimited in England and Wales.
Can I start the job during the 14 days?
The regulations say the trader must not begin supplying the service before the cancellation period ends unless the consumer has made an express request, and for an off-premises contract that request has to be on a durable medium. Where the service was not supplied in response to a request made that way, or where the required information was not given, the consumer bears no cost for what was supplied.
If I never agreed a price, can I just charge what the job was worth?
Not quite. Where no price was agreed, the Consumer Rights Act 2015 says the consumer must pay a reasonable price for the service and no more. Whether a price is reasonable is decided on the facts. That is the strongest practical argument for putting a number in writing before you start.
Does My Job Goblin make me compliant?
No, and anybody telling you their software does is selling you something. It records what you sent and when, and what the customer did with it. It does not produce the statutory cancellation notice, it does not check your terms, and it cannot know where you were standing when the customer said yes.
How does the AI quoting actually work?
You describe the job in plain English, for example 'replace 4m of guttering at the front of a two-storey semi'. My Job Goblin suggests line items, materials, labour hours and a sensible UK price, and you edit any of it before sending. You stay in control; the AI removes the blank page.
Can I use my own pricing?
Yes. Your hourly rate, day rate, materials markup and saved labour rates all feed the suggestions, so over time the quotes land closer to how you actually price.
Does it turn a quote into an invoice?
One tap. The line items, customer and totals carry across, and you confirm and send. Every quote keeps its status, so the pipeline lives in one place rather than in your head.
Does My Job Goblin tell me whether I am actually making money?
Yes, and that is the half most job software leaves out. It records the quote and the invoice like anything else, then does the arithmetic on top: revenue per available working day, margin per job against materials and subcontractor cost, quote win rate with the range it could really be, and how long customers take to pay weighted by the size of the invoice. Turnover on its own hides all four. No figure is shown on a sample too small to support it. Where there is too little history the card renders nothing, rather than a number with a caveat underneath it.
What is revenue per available working day?
It is what a day of your available time earned, rather than what you charged for a day you worked. Take the money received in a period and divide it by the working days that period held, from the working pattern you set. Hotels have measured this for decades as revenue per available room, because a room nobody booked is revenue that can never be recovered. A Tuesday you did not fill is exactly the same thing. My Job Goblin decomposes it the way a hotel does, into your effective day rate multiplied by your utilisation, so you can see which of the two moved.
Does it compare my prices against other tradespeople?
No, and that is deliberate. There is no benchmarking against other businesses. Trades publish no prices, day rates or availability in any machine-readable form, so a peer comparison in this market is either a very small sample or an invented one. Every figure compares a trader against their own history. A benchmark against a handful of unrepresentative businesses, or against a number nobody can source, is worse than no benchmark at all.
How much does it cost?
Pro is £29 a month or £290 a year, with no per-seat fees and no contract. Every new account starts on a 14 day free trial of Pro with no card needed, and drops to the free tier rather than switching off. The free tier runs 3 quotes and 3 invoices a month, end to end: build the quote, send the PDF, let the customer approve it in the portal, and invoice it. The AI pricing and description tools, expense tracking, certificate filing and reports are Pro. The HMRC year-end tools are Pro + Tax.
Why is the free tier so small?
The cap is small on purpose. A free tier big enough to run a trade on has to be paid for by the traders who do pay, and they are one-person businesses on a flat £29 a month with no per-seat fee. What the free tier proves is the whole loop rather than the volume: build the quote, send it, let the customer approve it, invoice it.