Another evening cleaning up quotes at home? Quotae gives you professional quotes from your phone — no broken formulas, no misaligned formats.
Quotae is a mobile quoting and invoicing app for self-employed construction professionals; Excel is a general-purpose spreadsheet. This page compares both tools for creating, sending, and tracking professional quotes from the job site.
For tradespeople who need to draft job-site quotes from a phone in minutes with automatic calculations and a professional PDF, Quotae is the better fit. Keep Excel only for general-purpose spreadsheets that aren't specific to invoicing.
| Feature | Quotae | Excel |
|---|---|---|
| Create a quote | Minutes, with ready templates | Hours, starting from scratch |
| Calculation errors | Automatic calculations, no broken formulas | Frequent when copying or moving cells |
| Professional result | PDF ready to send to the client | Requires manual formatting |
| Mobile access | Works on any device | Limited mobile experience |
| Cost control | Integrated tracking per line item | Separate sheets, hard to maintain |
| Learning curve | Intuitive from the first use | Need to master formulas and macros |
With Excel you build the structure from scratch, define formulas, adjust formatting, and pray nothing breaks when copying rows. All after the workday, at home. With Quotae you enter line items, calculations happen automatically, and you send the PDF via WhatsApp before leaving the site.
A formula that didn't update, a cell pointing to the wrong range — and the quote is off by thousands. In Quotae, calculations are built into the app: no fragile cells to break. Plus, you instantly see if your deposit covers the real job costs.
A quote made in Excel doesn't convey professionalism. With Quotae you generate a clean PDF with your logo, ready to send via WhatsApp in seconds. Your client receives something that looks like it came from a big company — because you are one.
Ever tried editing an Excel sheet on your phone? Tiny columns, endless scrolling, invisible formulas. Quotae is designed for mobile from day one. Dictate the job, adjust the numbers, and send the quote — all without leaving the site.
In Excel you need extra sheets and manual cross-referencing to know if a job is profitable. In Quotae you enter your material and labor costs, and instantly see if your deposit covers them. No more finding out after the job is done.
A quote isn't a standalone document. It's a chain that starts with a tape measure in the client's hallway and doesn't end until you get paid. Here is what Quotae replaces, step by step.
Instead of scribbling measurements in a notebook to write up later, you dictate the job out loud and Quotae turns it into line items. Your usual prices and your margin are already saved, so the amounts come out filled in.
You see the total, the VAT and what's left above your costs before you show the client anything. If the margin doesn't work, you fix it there — not two weeks later with the materials already bought.
The document comes out laid out, with your logo, and goes from your phone through the same channel you already use with the client. No exporting, no re-shuffling columns, no opening the laptop.
When they say yes, the invoice is generated from the quote: same line items, same amounts, same tax details, numbering carrying on in sequence. That's exactly the step a spreadsheet makes you copy and paste — and where the mistakes show up.
Excel is a fine spreadsheet and there's no reason to throw it away. It's still the best thing for a quick one-off calculation, for cross-checking data that fits no form, and for handing your accountant a list in whatever format they ask for. What it isn't is an invoicing system: it doesn't keep a history organised by client, it doesn't maintain a numbering sequence on its own, and it doesn't turn the quote into the invoice. That's why Quotae exports to CSV — so you keep using Excel where Excel is good.
Keep your sheets and the PDFs you already sent exactly as they are. Old documents stay valid and are worth holding on to for as long as your tax records must be kept.
Enter the ten or fifteen items you repeat on almost every job, with your price and your margin. It's half an hour, once, and it's what makes the next quote take minutes.
Migrate nothing else. Run the next job end to end in Quotae — quote, send, invoice — and compare it with the last time you did it in Excel. That's what the 30-day trial is for.
Excel and Word work for simple documents, but they aren't built to produce the traceable, chained, retained invoicing records that invoicing-software rules increasingly require. If loose templates are how you invoice today, that's the thing worth sorting out before the deadlines that apply to you. Quotae claims no official certification: it is being adapted to the requirements that apply to the self-employed.
No. Keep your old sheets and PDFs as they are; they stay valid. The only thing worth carrying over is your usual line items and your prices, and that's a one-off. From then on you work in the app and the new history organises itself, by client and by job.
Yes. Totals, per-line VAT and margin are computed inside the app, not by formulas you can break by copying a row or moving a cell. Enter your material and labour costs and you see straight away whether the price you're about to quote covers the job.
Yes. You can put the quote together with no signal and it syncs by itself when the signal comes back. Sending it by WhatsApp or email does need a connection, like any send.
A 30-day trial with full access and no card. After that, €24.90/month with unlimited quotes and invoices, PDFs, voice entry and priority support. Cancel from the app, no commitment.
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