A WorkLighter how-to

How to write quotes faster with AI

You write quotes faster with AI by splitting the job in two: you make the pricing decisions, and the AI does the writing up. Get your prices out of your head and into a written profile your AI assistant can always see, tell it the facts of each job in a quick voice note, let it draft the quote from your own prices, then check the numbers and send. If you send five or more quotes a week, that's 45 to 90 minutes back every week, for a one-off setup of about 45 minutes.

Why does writing a quote take twenty minutes?

Because the document takes far more typing than the decisions deserve. WorkLighter's free quoting recipe puts it in one line: a quote is three decisions (what's the work, what's the price, when can you do it) wrapped in twenty minutes of formatting and pleasantries. The decisions are usually made before you've left the job or hung up the phone. What eats the evening is the wrapper: the polite opening, the plain-English description of the work, what's included and what isn't, the payment terms, the read-through for typos.

None of that wrapper needs your judgement. It needs doing, in your voice, without mistakes, and that's a writing task. Writing tasks are what AI chat assistants are genuinely good at. So you keep the decisions and hand over the wrapper. The rest of this article is how to do that without ever sending a number you didn't choose.

Get your prices out of your head first

Every mainstream AI assistant has a profile, sometimes called custom instructions: a standing note it reads before every conversation. That profile is where your prices need to live before you ask for a single draft. Write down:

• your day rate, and your call-out charge if you have one
• the line items you price again and again
• how you handle materials
• how you treat VAT
• your deposit and payment terms

This is the prerequisite nobody skips twice. The free recipe this method comes from is blunt about why: quoting from memory is where margin quietly dies. Prices that live in your head flex. You knock a bit off when you're tired or keen to win the work, and you forget the call-out charge exactly when it matters. Written prices don't wobble, and once they're pinned, the assistant works from your real numbers instead of inventing plausible ones.

Expect this step to be nearly all of the setup. The recipe budgets about 45 minutes for the whole thing, and most of that is you deciding, perhaps for the first time in years, what your prices actually are. That part can be uncomfortable. It also pays even if you never send the AI a single job.

What does the day-to-day loop look like?

Once the profile is filled in, each quote becomes a short routine you can run from the van or between clients.

1. Say the facts. After you've priced the job in your head, voice-note or type what you know: who it's for, what the work is, the price you decided, when you can start, anything unusual. A ramble is fine. Untangling rambles is the assistant's problem, not yours.
2. Let it draft. The assistant writes the quote from your facts plus the prices and terms in your profile, laid out the same way every time.
3. Check, then send. Read every figure, correct anything the assistant assumed, and paste the finished quote into whatever you already use: email, a PDF, your invoicing app. No new software involved.

You'll notice there's no prompt to copy in this article. That's deliberate. The exact prompts, word for word, live in Recipe 2 of The Time Refund, and you can read that recipe in full, free, at the sample page. It also covers chasing the quotes that go quiet, which is a habit worth stealing on its own.

Where does this go wrong?

Two ways, mainly. The first is sending numbers you haven't looked at. Leave a gap in the facts and the assistant fills it with something that looks sensible, and a sensible-looking wrong number in a quote costs real money. The AI's job is to write up the price you chose, never to choose it. Reading the figures back takes under a minute. Do it on every quote.

The second is letting quotes get fancy. A quote wins work by being easy to say yes to. Keep it to one page and plain words, and make it obvious what's included and how to accept. An assistant will happily produce four elegant paragraphs about your craftsmanship if you let it. Don't let it.

And know the limits. The assistant doesn't know your diary, so when you can start stays your call. It can't tell that a job smells like trouble and deserves a higher number. Anything that needs judgement about this customer, this week, is still yours.

How much time does this actually save?

The recipe's own numbers: 45 to 90 minutes a week if you send five or more quotes a week, with setup at about 45 minutes. So the setup costs roughly what the first ordinary week gives back. If you only quote now and then, the saving shrinks with the volume, which is worth knowing before you begin.

Cost is simpler. If you already use an AI assistant, this needs £0 extra. If you don't, one paid assistant runs about £20 a month.

Most of the saving comes from the unglamorous step: writing your prices down. Once those exist, a quote stops being composition and becomes assembly, and assembly is quick. Faster quotes are really a side effect of tidier pricing. The AI is the smaller half of the trick.