Your construction quotes generated and signed online, at a fixed price

In brief

• Yes, you can generate your construction quotes automatically from a works library and have them signed online the same day: the eIDAS-compliant electronic signature has recognized legal value across the European Union.
• A hand-written quote takes 30 minutes to 1 hour; generated from standard works, it takes 10 to 15 minutes, mandatory clauses included.
• The quote is mandatory above 150 € incl. tax for building works and repairs, on penalty of a fine of up to 3,000 € (15,000 € for a company).
• Electronic signature providers observe that most signed documents are signed within the first 24 to 48 hours: the automatic follow-up within 48 h is the most profitable lever in the whole chain.
• Budget-wise: document generation from €440 excl. tax, electronic signature from €880 excl. tax, as a single fixed price, no per-user subscription.

The problem, concretely

In construction, the quote isn't a formality: it's the document that triggers the project, and often a legal obligation. For building works, repairs and maintenance, it's mandatory from 150 € incl. tax, with precise clauses (detailed breakdown, labor, travel, decennial insurance, validity period). Failing to provide it exposes you to an administrative fine of up to 3,000 € for a sole trader, 15,000 € for a company.

Yet in most companies with fewer than 10 employees (the vast majority of the sector), the quote is still done in the evening, in Word or Excel, starting from an old quote that gets modified. Result: 30 minutes to 1 hour per quote, calculation or VAT errors, forgotten clauses, and above all a 3 to 5 day sending delay when projects follow one another. Then the PDF goes out by email, and you wait. No structured follow-up, no visibility: "did they get it? did they read it? did they sign it?". Meanwhile, the client received two other quotes.

The real cost isn't the time spent, it's the sleeping revenue: a quote sent a week after the visit is a quote that has gone cold, and a quote never followed up is often a lost quote.

The complete chain: quote, signature, deposit, invoice

Here's the same day, before and after, step by step.

Before. On-site visit, notes in a notebook or on the phone. In the evening or at the weekend: opening an old Word quote, replacing the lines, recalculating totals, checking (or not) the clauses. Sending the PDF 3 to 5 days after the visit. The client prints, signs, scans, sends back: count a few more days, sometimes two weeks. The deposit is requested by email, the transfer arrives when it arrives. The final invoice is re-entered by hand, with the risk of a gap between the signed quote and the issued invoice.

After. During or right after the visit, you compose the quote by selecting works from the library: each work carries its wording, unit, price and VAT rate. The document is generated in the company's brand style, with all the mandatory clauses pre-filled. Sending the same day, by signature link. The client clicks, reads, signs from their phone: eIDAS-compliant signature, time-stamped, with an archived evidence file. At signature, a deposit payment link goes out automatically (30% is the common practice in construction). At the end of the project, the invoice is generated from the same data as the quote: no double entry, no gap.

Each link is useful on its own, but it's the complete chain that changes the cash flow: the time between "visit" and "deposit received" drops from two or three weeks to a few days.

The works library and the mandatory clauses

The heart of the system is the works library: your standard services (replacing a water heater, installing an electrical panel, creating a water point) described once and for all, with supplies, labor and margins. Composing a quote becomes an assembly, not a writing task. It also eliminates errors: the unit price and VAT rate (20%, 10% renovation, 5.5% energy renovation) are defined in the work, not copied every time.

The mandatory clauses (company identity and SIRET, detailed breakdown of each service, labor price, travel costs, incl.-tax and excl.-tax totals, validity period, professional insurance and decennial warranty with the insurer's details) live in the template, not in the drafter's memory. The official detail is on service-public (link in sources): that's the reference to follow, not the templates circulating on forums.

On signature, the European eIDAS regulation recognizes three levels. For a common construction quote, the simple or advanced signature, with time-stamping and an evidence file, is more than enough; I detailed the levels and use cases in this article on eIDAS signatures. The point that changes everything day to day isn't legal, it's commercial: the automatic follow-up. An unsigned quote is followed up at D+2 then D+7, without anyone having to think about it. Signature providers observe that most signatures happen within the first 24 to 48 hours after sending or follow-up: past that window, every reminder counts, and it's precisely what nobody has time to do by hand.

Mini-case: Vasseur Plumbing, 8 employees, 50 quotes a month

Fictional but realistic case, assembled from situations I encounter. Vasseur Plumbing, a plumbing-heating company of 8 employees near Lille, issues about 50 quotes a month for an average basket of 2,500 €. Before: the manager wrote the quotes in the evening, about 45 minutes each, i.e. more than 35 hours a month. Average sending delay: 4 days. Signed return: 8 to 10 days when the client signed, and no systematic follow-up.

Implementation: a library of about 120 works built from his old quotes, a quote template in his brand style with all the clauses, an online signature flow with follow-ups at D+2 and D+7, and a 30% deposit link sent at signature.

Six months later, the conservative finding: 10 to 15 minutes per quote instead of 45, i.e. about twenty hours given back every month; quotes sent on the day of the visit in most cases; a signature time down from more than a week to 24-48 hours for committed clients; and a few projects won simply because the quote arrived before the competitors'. No magic: the same quote, sent earlier and followed up in time.

How much it costs (and what it brings back)

Three families of solutions on the market. SaaS construction quote-invoice software generally costs 20 to 100 € per month per user; it's relevant if a standard template works for you, less so if you want your brand style, your sequences and your integrated signature. Signature-only platforms run around 10 to 40 € per month per user, sometimes with a cost per send. Custom development at an agency rarely starts below 10,000 to 30,000 €.

My positioning sits in between: features already built, which I adapt to your business, at a fixed price. Document generation (your templates, your works library, your clauses) starts at €440 excl. tax: I detailed what this price covers in this article on the cost of PDF generation. The electronic signature flow (sending, eIDAS signature, follow-ups, evidence file, tracking) starts at €880 excl. tax. These are one-time packages, not per-user subscriptions, and the signature I deliver is the one running in production on BeForBuild.com, my B2B SaaS for construction: I don't start from a blank page.

The return calculation is simple and deliberately conservative. Take 40 quotes a month and 30 minutes saved per quote: 20 hours a month. Valued at 40-50 € an hour, that's 800 to 1,000 € a month of productive time recovered. The two building blocks together (about 3,500 € excl. tax) pay back in 3 to 5 months, before even counting the commercial effect: a single additional project signed thanks to a quote sent the same day covers, on its own, a good part of the investment.

Where to start

1. The free 30-minute audit. We look together at your current quotes, your monthly volume, your existing software if you have one, and where the time really goes. You leave with a diagnosis and a fixed-price quote within 48 h, whether we work together or not.

2. The quote first. We build the works library from your old quotes and the template in your brand style. It's the link with the most immediate return: from the first week, quotes go out faster and cleaner. If your quote software suits you, we connect to it instead of replacing it.

3. The signature, then the rest of the chain. We connect the signature flow and the automatic follow-ups, then, once it's running smoothly, the deposit at signature and the invoice generated from the same data. One link at a time, each measurable.

Sources

• Service-Public Entreprendre: mandatory quote, affected activities and clauses
• Regulation (EU) No 910/2014 (eIDAS) on EUR-Lex
• economie.gouv.fr: mandatory quote, how it works