Estimate vs quote: what the difference actually is

How By5 moves a job from enquiry to payment

In By5 an estimate and a quote are not two different products. They are stages of the same job, and each one carries the last one’s detail forward instead of asking you to type it again.

1. 1

   Enquiry

   Someone gets in touch — a form, a message, a call. At this point you have interest and not much else.

2. 2

   Estimate

   You work out what the job involves and what it costs: labour by the hour or the day, materials with quantities and markups, and how many visits it takes. This is your working-out, not the customer's document.

3. 3

   Quote

   The fixed price you send. The customer opens their own portal link, and can accept it or ask for changes. Until you send it, it is a draft and the customer sees nothing.

4. 4

   Job

   An accepted quote becomes work: scheduled visits, job details, site notes and photos, and progress the office can see.

5. 5

   Invoice

   Raised from the completed work, including deposits where you take them, and tracked through to payment.

Common questions

What is the difference between an estimate and a quote?

An estimate is an approximate price given before the full scope is known — useful for telling a customer roughly what a job will cost. A quote is a fixed price for a defined scope of work, which the customer can accept. In practice the difference that matters is commitment: an estimate signals a likely figure, a quote is the number you are prepared to stand behind. What either one obliges you to do is governed by your own terms of business, not by the label.

Does By5 treat estimates and quotes as different things?

They are two stages of the same piece of work rather than two separate products. You build the numbers in the estimate workspace — labour, materials, markups, visits — and what leaves that workspace is a quote you send to the customer. Nothing reaches the customer until you send the portal link.

What do the quote statuses mean?

A quote is a draft while you are still working on it, and nothing has been sent. It becomes sent once you send the customer their portal link. From there the customer can accept it or decline it, and you can see which quotes are still waiting so they can be followed up.

What is the difference between revising a quote and duplicating it?

Revise creates a new version that supersedes the one it came from — use it when the same customer needs a changed price for the same job. Duplicate makes a separate quote with its own number and leaves the original alone — use it when you want to quote the same work to somebody else. The distinction matters: revising in order to copy a quote would replace the quote you were copying from.

Can I edit a quote after I have sent it?

A sent quote is not edited in place. If the price or the scope changes after the customer has it, you revise it, which creates a new version and supersedes the old one. That way the customer is never looking at a document that quietly changed underneath them, and you keep a record of what was actually sent.

What happens after a customer accepts a quote?

An accepted quote becomes the job: the work is scheduled, visits are booked, and the people doing it get the job details, site notes and photos. When the work is done the invoice is raised from it, so the quote, the job and the invoice stay connected to the same customer record.

Quoting is what QUOTES does, and the work after acceptance is JOBS. More answers on the FAQ.