Getting a building quote accepted in writing today
How a small builder writes a quote as a signable document, gets the client's electronic signature and files it, while plain sales quotes cannot be saved.
By Achekam · · 4 min read · For Construction businesses in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya
"Go ahead," says the client in a voice note, and the builder orders bricks. Three weeks later the wall is half-built and the client remembers a lower price, or a different height, or that the gate was meant to be included. Nothing was signed, so it is one memory against another.
Small builders lose more money to unsigned quotes than to almost anything else. The fix is old-fashioned: a written quote, signed by the client before work starts. This article shows how to do that in Achekam today, given one important limit on quotes, and how to carry the signed quote through to the invoice.
Why quotes typed on the Billing pages are lost on reload
Start with the limit. A business cannot yet save a plain sales quote in Achekam and later turn it into an invoice. Quotes typed on the Billing & Finance and Smart Accounting pages live only in the browser and are lost when the page reloads.
So do not build your quoting on those pages. A quote you spend an hour on and then lose is worse than no quote at all. Instead, write the quote as a document and send it for signature, as below.
Writing the quote as a document with merge fields
Achekam's signing tools accept three kinds of document: an uploaded PDF, a document composed from text blocks with merge fields, or a saved template. For a builder who quotes the same kinds of job repeatedly, a saved template is the efficient choice: write it once, with merge fields for the client's name, the site address and the date, and reuse it.
The logo, brand colour and company details you set under Settings appear on documents composed for signature, so the quote looks like it comes from your business.
What a building quote should state:
- the client's name and the site address;
- the scope of work, item by item, and what is excluded;
- the price, and whether it includes VAT;
- how long the price is valid;
- the deposit and the payment stages;
- the expected start date and duration;
- how variations will be priced and agreed;
- who supplies materials the client chooses, such as tiles or fittings.
Sending it for the client's signature
Any document can be sent for electronic signature, with signature and initials fields placed on it. Put initials on each page and a signature at the acceptance block. Signers can sign in order or all at once, which matters when two spouses or two directors must both sign. Set an expiry that matches the quote's validity, and let the reminders do the chasing.
Two practical points. The signing console has no sidebar entry; it opens from the Sign button and the dashboard. And an envelope with a signer from outside the business must be linked to a client or a CRM lead before it is sent, so set up the client first.
Electronic signatures are recognised widely in law. The UNCITRAL Model Law on Electronic Signatures sets out reliability criteria for treating electronic signatures as equivalent to handwritten ones, and many national e-signature laws are built on it. If a client or a bank insists on ink for a particular document, follow that.
Filing the signed quote with the job
When everyone has signed, Achekam produces the signed PDF with a completion certificate listing each signer's e-mail, the times, their IP address and browser, and the document's fingerprint, and files it in the client's Signed documents folder.
Keep everything for the job together in Documents. Document Centre is a folder-based store where you can tag and search files, and a new version keeps the earlier ones. Site instructions and drawing revisions belong in the same place, as keeping site instructions as evidence describes.
From accepted quote to draft invoice
Once the quote is signed, create the first invoice. Customer invoices start as drafts you can change or delete, and issuing one takes the next number in your sequence and posts debtors, sales and output VAT. Copy the stage or deposit wording from the signed quote so the client sees the same description.
Achekam does not offer pro-forma invoices. If you want a deposit before ordering materials, the deposit is invoiced as a real invoice, or you agree with your accountant another way to hold it. On bigger jobs where the client pays an advance that is recovered from later claims, setting a client's advance off against progress claims explains a cleaner route.
Keeping quote numbers and revisions straight
Clients ask for changes before they sign: a cheaper finish, a smaller slab, the gate after all. Every change is a revision, and revisions cause disputes when the client signs one version and remembers another.
A simple discipline:
- Give every quote a reference, and add a revision letter to it each time it changes: A, B, C.
- Put the reference and revision on every page.
- When a revision is issued, tell the client in writing that the earlier version is withdrawn, and keep the expiry on each envelope short, so an old version is not signed by mistake.
- File each version; Documents keeps earlier versions when you upload a new one.
- Never start work until the signed version's reference is written on the job card.
Travel agencies use templates for their booking terms in much the same way; a booking terms template shows how they keep the wording consistent.
This week
Write your most common quote as a template with merge fields, set up two or three current clients, and send the next quote for signature rather than by WhatsApp. The first time a client disputes a price, the completion certificate will pay for the effort.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
