Small Business Digital
How I Built a Quoting App for a Gardening Business in a Weekend
1 September 2025
My son runs a gardening business. Like most small trades businesses, he was dealing with the quoting problem that costs tradespeople hours every week: writing up quotes, sending them, chasing them, and trying to work out which jobs were confirmed and which were still waiting for a decision.
I built him a quoting app over a weekend. It is not a sophisticated piece of software. It is a practical tool that solved a real problem and saved him several hours a week from the first day he used it.
This is what I built, how I built it, and why the same approach could work for most small trades businesses.
What the problem actually was
Before I built anything, I spent time understanding exactly where the friction was. This is the step most people skip, and it is the most important one.
The friction was in three places. First, converting a site visit and a mental estimate into a written quote took too long because he was starting from scratch each time. Second, quotes sent by WhatsApp or email were getting lost and there was no easy way to see which ones were outstanding. Third, the gap between what he quoted and what jobs actually took in hours was widening, and he had no data to understand why.
Three problems. Each needed a different solution.
What I built
A quoting template with pre-loaded pricing. A structured form that took the information from a site visit, applied his standard rates for different job types, and produced a formatted quote ready to send. What previously took twenty minutes of writing and calculating took five.
A quote log. Every quote generated gets logged automatically with the date, customer name, job description, amount quoted, and status. Outstanding, accepted, declined. At any point he can see exactly what is in the pipeline and what needs following up.
An actuals tracker. After each job, he logs the actual hours. The tool compares estimated hours to actual hours over time and surfaces the jobs where the estimate was consistently wrong. Over six months, this data changed how he quotes certain types of work.
How I built it
The tool is built in Excel with some AI-assisted automation to handle the more repetitive parts. I used a combination of structured forms, lookup tables for pricing, and automated email generation for sending quotes.
It is not a web application. It does not require a subscription or a developer to maintain. It lives on his phone and his laptop and it works without an internet connection.
The total build time was one weekend for the core tool and another few hours over subsequent weeks refining it based on how he actually used it. The refinements came from watching him use it and asking what was awkward.
What it changed
The quoting process went from twenty minutes to five. The follow-up process went from ad hoc to automatic. The pipeline is visible at a glance. And the pricing data has already influenced how he quotes certain types of jobs, improving margin on the work where he was consistently underestimating.
Two other local tradespeople have since started using an adapted version of the same tool. The adaptations took a few hours each because the core logic is the same for most trades quoting processes.
The broader point
Most small trades businesses have three or four processes that consume disproportionate time relative to their importance. Quoting is almost always one of them, and there are other automations for small businesses that deliver similar returns. The solution is rarely a complex software purchase. It is usually a well-designed tool built around how the business actually works, maintained by someone who understands both the process and the technology.
That is what I build for small businesses. Not enterprise software. Practical tools that solve specific problems, create systems that create independence, and give people their time back.
Maebh Collins builds quoting tools, process automations, and digital presence solutions for small and micro businesses in Ireland.
Maebh Collins is a Chartered Accountant (FCA, ICAEW), Big 4 trained, with twenty years of experience building and running international businesses. She specialises in finance transformation, ecommerce operations, and digital strategy.