Mark runs a fit-out company in Dublin. Before Bulido he lost every Saturday to quoting. Now he sends offers from his phone on the way back from the survey.
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Mark runs a four-person fit-out crew in Dublin. Full apartment refurbishments, mostly for developers and private clients. A year ago, quoting ate every Saturday. Now he sends offers from his phone on the way back from the survey. Here's what changed.
The problem: every new client meant another Saturday on quotes
"I was doing 8–10 site surveys a week. Saturday I'd sit down with the laptop and write quotes from morning until evening. My wife stopped planning anything for weekends."
Mark's typical flow before:
- Site survey (Mon–Fri).
- Notes in a paper notebook.
- Saturday: Excel, copying measurements, hunting for prices in four other quotes.
- Building a PDF in Word.
- Sending it by email.
Average time per quote: 2 hours. With 10 quotes a week, that's 20 hours of quoting. The whole of Saturday, sometimes Sunday too.
What Mark had tried before
Excel + Word
"I had an Excel template, but every bathroom was different. I'd end up copy-pasting, editing, and the columns would break. Then exporting Word to PDF, the layout shifted every other time."
Invoicing apps
"I tried QuickBooks and one or two others. Fine for invoicing, but for building a renovation quote with rooms and line items? Useless. Those apps are built for retail, not for trades."
A custom build
"My brother's in IT, he set me up with something on WordPress. Worked for a month, then broke on an update. I gave up."
What changed with Bulido
A service catalogue as the foundation
The first Saturday went on building the catalogue. Every typical line item Mark works with: floor tiles per m², wall tiles per m², second-fix sanitaryware per item, electrics per point. Prices loaded with margin already.
"A week later I wasn't typing line items by hand any more. Click from the list."
Templates per job type
He built three templates: standard bathroom, full kitchen, developer-finish flat. Every new quote starts from a template: tweak the metres and you're done.
Direct delivery to the client
Instead of a PDF in an email, the client gets a link to the quote online. They see every line, can leave a comment, and accept with one click.
"Clients appreciate it. No more 'can you send it again, I can't open the file'."
The numbers after six months
| Metric | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Time per quote | 2 hours | 10 minutes |
| Quotes sent per week | 10 | 14 |
| Quote-to-signed conversion | 35% | 48% |
| Saturdays on quoting | 4/4 | 0/4 |
The higher conversion comes from speed of response. Mark sends the quote the same day as the survey, his competition only the following week.
Advice for other contractors
"Don't try to build the perfect catalogue from day one. Do the 20 most common line items, prices off the top of your head. You'll fix them after the first five quotes. The point is to start. Every week of manual Excel is another 20 hours of your life in the bin."
Your first quote in Bulido
Set up a free account. Your first quote is ready in 10 minutes. No card, no commitment. If it doesn't work out, you can always go back to Excel.