Getting better quotations from your AI assistant

A few minutes in Settings makes every quote sound more like you.

Why bother with this?

Out of the box, ✨ Build My Quote (our AI quoting software) writes a solid, professional quotation from whatever you describe. But it doesn't know anything about your business: how you usually word things, what you always recommend, or what a quote from you normally looks like. A few minutes filling in two things in Settings changes that: the AI starts sounding like your business instead of a generic tradesperson, and starts writing quotes closer to what you'd have written yourself, first time, without you needing to edit as much.

Nothing here is required. Build My Quote works fine without any of it. This is about making it work better for your business specifically.

How Company Knowledge works

In Settings → AI Assistant, there are three plain-text boxes:

Business overview: what you do, the kind of jobs you take on, anything that shapes how a quote should be framed.
Preferred recommendations: things you like to suggest to customers when relevant (a particular material, an upsell you often mention, a maintenance tip).
Writing style: how you want quotes to sound. Formal or friendly, brief or detailed, anything you'd tell a new office assistant on their first day.

These aren't rules the AI blindly follows. Think of them as background the AI keeps in mind, the same way a good office assistant remembers how you like things done without being told every single time. Every one of these boxes is optional. Fill in what's useful and leave the rest blank.

How Favourite Quotations help

Also in Settings → AI Assistant, you can mark up to 5 past quotations as favourites, ones you were genuinely happy with, that read the way you want quotes to read. The AI uses these as style examples: not to copy them word-for-word, but to pick up your phrasing, your level of detail, and how you structure a scope of works.

A favourite is a snapshot, taken the moment you save it. If you later edit or archive the original job, the saved favourite doesn't change. It's a permanent copy of what made that quote good, independent of what happens to the original.

What to actually add

Start small. In order of what makes the biggest difference:

A short business overview: two or three sentences is plenty.
One or two favourite quotations you're proud of.
Preferred recommendations, if you consistently upsell or suggest the same things.
Writing style, if you've noticed the AI's tone doesn't quite match how you'd put it.

You don't need to fill in everything at once. Add a favourite quotation or two after a job you were happy with, and it builds up naturally over time.

Choosing good favourite quotations

Favour quotes where:

The scope of works is clearly and accurately described. This is what the AI leans on most.
The wording sounds like you, not like it was copied from somewhere else.
The job was a fairly typical one for your business. An unusual one-off job teaches the AI the wrong lesson for most future quotes.

Five is the limit, so pick a handful that best represent your normal work rather than trying to cover every type of job you do.

Before you save a favourite: privacy

When you mark a quote as a favourite, you'll see a review step before it's saved. Check it for anything that shouldn't be kept as a permanent style example:

Remove the customer's name or any other identifying detail from the wording.
Prices and totals aren't saved as part of a favourite at all. You don't need to worry about those.
If in doubt, edit the wording down to just the job description before confirming, or pick a different quote.

A favourite is meant to teach the AI how you write. It was never meant to carry a specific customer's details, and the review step is there so that's always your decision, not an automatic one.

Any of this can be changed or removed at any time from Settings → AI Assistant. Questions: hello@tradeflow365.com.