Three pencilled lines in a site notebook and a customer waiting. AI can turn them into a clear, detailed quote, as long as you know what to hand it and what to check before you send.
"The bathroom customer called back: she's still waiting for her quote." It comes up on a Tuesday evening, at the office, which means the corner of the table where the supplier's invoices pile up next to the spiral notebook from the van. The quote does exist, in a way: three lines in pencil on a page stained with tile adhesive. "Strip out bath, 90 × 120 shower tray, tiles on 2 walls, thermostatic mixer, allow 3 days, two of us." What's left is to turn it into a document the customer understands, with the right details on it, that doesn't look as if it was written on the bonnet of the van.
AI can turn those notes into itemised lines, priced one by one, that a homeowner can read. But your notes also hold the customer's name, the door code, sometimes the fact that the house will be empty in August. And your prices, which you have no wish to see passed around.
Here are two checklists: what to remove before giving your notes to an AI, and what to check before sending the quote.
The rules depend on the country. In several European countries, a written quote is required for many jobs and call-outs in private homes, and it has to carry specific details: the business's identity and registration number, the date and how long the quote is valid, a detailed description of the work, quantities and unit prices, labour, travel costs, the total before tax, VAT and the total including tax. In some trades, the compulsory professional insurance must also appear on it. Once the customer has signed it as accepted, the quote usually binds you to the price. Signed in the customer's home, it may give them a cooling-off period.
In Switzerland, people more often speak of an offer and the law requires fewer details, but the difference between a fixed price and an approximate estimate matters if the final invoice is well above the estimate.
On the data side, a quote says a lot. The customer's contact details are personal data, protected by the GDPR as well as by the Swiss FADP. And your purchase prices, your trade discounts and your mark-up are exactly what your competitors would most like to know.
The general list, for every profession: the data you should never paste into an AI.
Once the first list is ticked off, what remains is what the AI actually needs: the work, the quantities and your selling prices. In IA Confidential, this information is handled by default by open models installed on servers in Switzerland, under Swiss data protection law and outside the reach of the CLOUD Act. These confidential models pass nothing on to third parties. The tool offers three families of models, local, specialised and external, chosen automatically or by hand; external models are only used if you choose them.
Create a "Quotes" space and keep one conversation per job in it. In the space's Assistant tab, write your instructions once and for all: your trade, units, order of the items, tone, and the rule of leaving VAT and the customer's identity blank. They take precedence over your general preferences: every quote follows the same pattern.
On a computer, with Chrome, Edge or Opera, you can add the folder where you keep your quotes to the space, with the "Confidential models" option. The assistant finds in it how you described a similar bathroom, and that folder is never sent to an external model. On another browser or on a phone, simply attach an old quote to your message: it is read in your browser, and only pseudonymised extracts would go to an external model if you chose one.
Here are my site notes for a bathroom in a 1970s house: removal of the bath and existing wall tiles, low-profile 90 × 120 shower tray with a fixed glass panel, tiling on two walls up to the ceiling (about 11 m²), thermostatic mixer, rework of the waste pipe, three days' work for two people. My selling prices follow. Write a detailed quote broken down by item (preparation, supply, fitting, finishing, removal of rubble) with quantity, unit, unit price and total before tax for each line. Leave VAT and the customer's identity blank, list separately the work that is not included, and flag any quantity that seems to be missing.
Then paste your price list. The assistant writes the quote as a document: you see a preview, you edit it, you keep the successive versions, then you print it as a PDF or export it to Word or OpenDocument. The layout is rebuilt on export: carry the content over into your usual template or quoting software, which keeps your letterhead and your numbering.
Before sending, have the quote read with an outsider's eye:
Read this quote as a wary customer comparing three offers would. Tell me which items are too vague, what questions they are likely to ask me on the phone and what could lead to an argument at the end of the job. Do not change any price and do not add any item.
If you prefer an external model, the Confidentiality filter checks your message first: if it detects sensitive data, it offers to answer with a confidential model, message unchanged, or to anonymise it for the external model, with a version you review and correct. In the Privacy panel, add your own anonymisation rules: the names of your regular customers and suppliers, which no detector can guess on its own.
It doesn't price a job. Without your prices, it suggests "average" amounts that match neither your region nor your fitting time: never use them. It can also be wrong and invent things with full confidence, whether it's a legal requirement, an insurance rule or a grant condition. For those points, your trade association or your accountant remain the right people to ask. And a signed quote commits you, not the tool that laid it out.
With a confidential model, your notes, your prices and the quote are processed on servers located in Switzerland, and nothing is kept on our side: your conversation history stays in your browser. We couldn't hand it over if asked, because we don't have it. A folder added with the "Confidential models" option never goes to an external model.
With an external model, nothing leaves without going through the Confidentiality filter, and you are the one who chooses between the anonymised version, pseudonymised extracts or sending it as it is, knowing what that means.
One precaution stays in your hands: the office computer is often also used by the partner who does the books or by the apprentice, and the history can be read by anyone using the same browser session. Use a session of your own and sign out when you leave.
To explain figures to someone outside the trade, see also our guide to explaining a balance sheet to a client, and for the basic habits, how to use AI at work safely.
To turn your next rough site notes into a presentable quote, starting with made-up notes: open the chat.
