The step between finishing an estimate and it being in front of a customer. You see the page exactly as they will see it, with the visibility switches already applied — down to every line of the building description, word for word. You can adjust wording for this one customer without touching your templates. Then it sends, with the expiry your account chose, and you find out whether it was delivered and whether it was opened. Leads 2 Build is built only for post-frame and barndominium builders, so the page you check reads like the building: eave height, truss spacing, the porch.
Also called: send the quote · email the estimate · estimate link · share with the customer
Read it the way they will read it
Not a preview pane — the page, with your visibility switches applied. The last screen before sending should be the customer's screen, because after it is sent you cannot unsee it for them.
The first person to read the document the customer's way ends up being the customer, so the note left over from the last job is theirs to find, not yours.
Their answers from the intake form are already filled in, so what you are proofreading is their copy rather than a template, and any wording you change stays on their copy. The same screen is the one that sends it — what you read and what goes out cannot drift apart.
Read the building description before they do
Try itWhat They See lists every line under Your Custom Building with the exact words the customer will read — 40' wide x 60' long x 14' tall, 48" on center pre-engineered trusses with a 4/12 pitched roof — each with its own switch. The send screen runs the same wording the customer's page runs, so the preview is the page. A line that doesn't fit this job — a standard Concrete pad (details per plans) on a building with no slab — switches off for this estimate only.
Gaps in the building description fill with standard wording, and the first person to read Concrete pad (details per plans) on a job with no slab is the customer.
A customer who reads a description that doesn't match their building starts wondering what else is wrong. Checking the exact words before sending stops that doubt before it starts — and the fix is a two-second untick, not an awkward phone call.
Change the words for this one customer
Try itA note that suits this job, a service description worded for this buyer. Edited here, not in your templates — so a one-off never quietly becomes your default.
The concrete description you softened at 9pm for one fussy customer quietly becomes the description every customer reads for the next two years.
The edit sits on this estimate with the standard wording still shown underneath it, so you can see exactly what you departed from and put it back in one click. Leave it empty and that line simply carries no description for this buyer.
Send it to everyone who decides
Both partners, the son who is paying, the farm manager. The person who opens your quote is often not the person you have been talking to, and one address is a bet you do not need to make.
You have the husband's email, the wife decides, and your quote sits for a week in the one inbox where nothing is being decided.
Who gets the link is settled on its own tab, apart from the quote itself, so adding the wife, the son who is paying and the farm manager changes the audience and nothing about the document. One page, one price, several people — instead of forwarded copies nobody can account for.
Email or text, whichever they answer
Some customers do not read email. The same link goes by text, and the page is built for a phone anyway.
The quote lands in an account he opens on Sundays, and you spend five days reading silence as hesitation.
Email, text or both is a single choice at the moment of sending, and the personal note you type rides with whichever you pick. The expiry date sitting beside it is what stops this month's lumber price being quoted back at you in March.
Your expiry date, not a house number
Try itEach account sets how long its estimates hold — 72 hours, 30 days, whatever your supplier pricing allows. The send screen starts every estimate there and says so: Default for every estimate: 30 days. A rep can still change this one estimate's date; an admin or sales manager can Change default right on the screen, or in Settings.
Every send starts at a date somebody else chose, so reps reset it by hand on every quote — or forget, and the price lapses before the customer has read it.
A deadline the customer can see moves them to decide, and one that matches your supplier's pricing protects you when steel jumps. Setting it once means reps stop fiddling with dates and nobody quotes a price you can't hold.
Feet and inches, and a price you can type
Try itOn a SmartBuild-priced estimate, a service line takes measurements the way a tape reads — 48'6", 20 6, 42" — and reads them back as 48′ 6″. When the job is agreed at a round number, click the line's total and type it: the line shows set by hand · calculated $12,125.00 — reset, the customer's page drops that line's unit price so its arithmetic never contradicts itself, and because the price is off your catalog it goes through pricing approval before it can be sent. Make optional on the same line keeps it out of the total for the customer to add.
A pad that's forty-eight and a half feet long gets typed as 48.5 or rounded up, and the round number the job was agreed at has to be forced by fiddling the rate.
Builders measure in feet and inches and agree prices in round numbers. When the estimate takes both as they come, nobody does sums at the kitchen table to make it fit — and every hand-set price still gets a second look before it leaves.
You find out if it bounced
Try itA wrong address is reported, not swallowed. Silence you can act on is worth more than silence you have to interpret — and a bounce is the cheapest sale to save.
A send that failed looks identical to a customer taking their time, right up until you phone a week later and learn nothing ever arrived.
The failure appears on the send screen itself, naming the step it stopped at and handing you a reference to quote, so a quote never sits in your list wearing a status it did not earn. Trying again is one button — nothing about the estimate has to be rebuilt.
…and whether they opened it
Opened, when, how many times, on what. A customer who has read it four times is a different phone call from one who has not read it once.
You have phoned twice and left it three days, and you still cannot tell a customer weighing the number against one who never got past the subject line.
It counts people, not sends — six opens from the wife and one from the man you have been calling tells you which of them is actually reading it. Minutes on the page and the first and last visit turn a hunch about interest into something you can time a call around.
Chase it without guessing
Try itThe status is on the deal, so the follow-up is informed: checking you got it to the one who never opened it, and any questions on the concrete? to the one who has been back three times.
You open the list, see a send button on a quote that went out last week, and now you genuinely do not know whether it went.
The status waits the second it takes to look the answer up rather than guessing, so it never offers to send something the customer already has. What the list says is what happened — the follow-up starts from fact instead of from a stale button.
Revise it without resending it
Try itChange the price and the same link shows the new one. No version two in their inbox, no chance of a signature on the old figure.
The price changes, you email a second copy, and three weeks later somebody signs the first one.
Every version is kept and exactly one is marked live, so the version the customer is looking at is a decision you made, not whichever file you happened to send last. An internal draft cannot go live by accident — it passes through the send step first, so labour and markup are on it before anyone outside sees it.
…and if they've already signed
Try itAn estimate with a signature on it will not quietly change under the customer. Unlock it deliberately, and the fact that you did is recorded — because the alternative is a signed document that no longer matches what was signed.
The customer approved at one number, a price got nudged afterwards, and now nobody can say which figure was actually agreed to.
The lock covers the things that move money — colours, markup, labour, the payment schedule — and opening it is presented as a re-negotiation before you commit, with your name on the entry. It re-arms the moment the customer approves the revised version, so an estimate is only ever open on purpose.
- 1Open Review & Send and read the page as the customer will
- 2The visibility switches are already applied — what you see is what they get
- 3Read every Your Custom Building line word for word, and switch off any that don't fit this job
- 4Adjust wording for this customer only, without touching your templates
- 5The expiry date starts at your account's default, and you can still change it for this one
- 6Send by email or text, to as many people as the decision involves
- 7Delivery is confirmed — a bounce tells you, rather than silence
- 8Opens are recorded, so following up is informed rather than blind
- 9Revise later and the same link updates — no second document
The most expensive mistake in estimating is not a wrong number. It is a right number sent to the wrong impression — a labour line you meant to hide, a service description that reads badly, a note left in from the last job. Once it is sent you cannot unsee it for them. So the last screen before sending is the customer's screen, not yours. And after sending, silence is ambiguous: a customer who has not opened it and a customer who is thinking about it need completely different follow-ups, and without delivery and open state you cannot tell which one you have.
- Sending without seeing what the customer sees
- Per-customer wording changes that pollute your templates
- Bounced sends that look like silence
- Following up blind
- Standard building wording that doesn't fit this job
- An expiry date somebody else chose
Send to more than one person, by email or text
The delivery tab. A main recipient plus anyone else, each with a name, an email and a phone. The estimate expires — 30 days unless you say otherwise. A personal message rides along with it.
Attach plans and blueprints to the quote
You attach from the plans this job already generated, not from a file browser. Choosing one builds it, uploads it and adds it to the send — and switches the plans section on for you, so the file actually appears.
A failed send names the step and gives you a reference
Every send carries a short reference code and a marker for how far it got. When it breaks, both come back to you — so the person you call has something to search for.
