One reference, and everything hangs off it
Every job gets a number the day it arrives. The quote, the invoice, the receipts and the photographs all carry it.
Sitebooks · included with the £497 plan
You went into a trade. The office came with it.
So talk at your phone on the way home, and the quote's written before you've parked. Priced on your own materials and your own day rate, not somebody's regional average. Then it keeps the invoices, the receipts and the job records in order behind it.
See what it costs£497 a month, excluding VAT.
Watch it workingFifteen minutes on a video call. No pitch.
Illustration of an example job, not a real customer and not a screenshot.
Why it exists Built out of losing work
I built this because my own paperwork was costing me jobs.
Two thousand pounds of tiling on a terrace. He chased me for that quote twice, and both times I told him I was waiting on the tile price. I wasn't. I just hadn't written it.
Around eight thousand pounds of finished work sat on my van dashboard as receipts and job sheets, waiting to be invoiced. I still can't tell you the exact figure, and that's rather the point.
None of that was a pricing problem or a skills problem. It was a Tuesday problem. I was on the tools all day, and the office work waited for a version of me that had an evening left in him.
So I built the thing I needed, and ran my own jobs through it before it went anywhere near anybody else's.
Leon Smith, who runs Cobalt.
From the van How it actually goes
Four steps, and three of them aren't yours.
You send it the way you'd tell an office manager. Talk at your phone for a minute, add a couple of photographs, carry on with your day.
Illustration of the chat on an example job, not a real customer.
Step 01
You send it
A voice note and a few photographs into Telegram, from the van, the site or the merchant's car park. No forms, no app to learn.
Step 02
It prices it
Against your day rate, your crew size, your materials list and your uplift. Your numbers, not a generic template and not a guess.
Step 03
It comes back
A branded quotation in your colours, grouped so a customer can actually read it, plus a private view of cost and margin that only you see.
Step 04
You check and send
You read it, change anything you want and send it. Nothing goes to a customer on its own, and that isn't a setting anyone can switch off.
Voice note in, finished quote back, in under two minutes. Leon has timed it more times than he'd like to admit.
The quote What lands back on your phone
A quotation you'd be happy to put your name on.
The version your customer sees is clean: your logo, your brand colour, and a handful of grouped lines rather than a spreadsheet of forty. They can understand what they're paying for without being shown what everything cost you.
- Labour with the day count, so it doesn't look plucked out of the air
- Fittings, tiling, plumbing and electrical, materials and waste, grouped
- A total excluding VAT, at the rate that actually applies to that job
- A private internal view of cost, charge and margin, for your eyes
- Every revision kept as v1, v2, v3, so a disagreement has a paper trail
If something isn't priced, it says so rather than inventing a number. You'd rather be told than find out on the invoice.
Illustration of an example quotation, not a real customer job.
Two documents One you send, one you don't
Every quote comes back twice.
What they get
Seven pages, and none of it is a shopping list.
Your customer gets a proper quotation. You get a second page they never see, with what everything actually cost you sitting next to what you're charging for it.
- The work, stage by stage. Strip out, first fix, tanking, tiling, second fix, finishing, written out in plain words.
- Everything going into it, with the quantities, so nobody argues later about what was included.
- Tiles priced provisionally at a rate per square metre, settled at real cost once they've chosen.
- The items where taste moves the price, each with its range, so a dearer vanity unit isn't a row.
- What you've assumed and what isn't included, including anything found after strip out.
- Staged payments, and a guarantee on the workmanship.
- Their cancellation rights and the form, which most quotes off a phone leave out entirely.
Opens the real seven-page PDF. Nothing to fill in.
What you get
The page with your costs on it.
ITEM QTY COST CHARGE Waste removal 1 120 170 Porcelain floor tile 7 175 175 Ceramic wall tile 24 600 600 Edge trim 8 7 14 Flexible adhesive 10 90 180 Flexible grout 6 78 156 Sanitary silicone 4 36 72 Levelling compound 2 40 80 Bonding plaster 2 10 20 Finish plaster 2 28 56 Water resistant board 4 80 160 WC and seat 1 250 300 Vanity unit and basin 1 400 450 Shower tray 1 400 450 Shower screen 1 600 650 Thermostatic shower 1 200 250 Basin mixer 1 100 150 Waste and trap 3 60 120 Copper pipework 12 60 120 Waste pipework 5 10 20 Plumbing fittings 1 200 200 Heated towel rail 1 200 250 Extract fan 1 50 100 Downlight 4 120 240 Electric cable 1.5mm 25 25 50 Electric cable 2.5mm 10 20 40 Back box 3 6 12 Light switch 1 20 40 Consumables 1 100 100
Materials cost4,084.80
Materials charged5,224.60
Materials margin1,139.80×1.28
Labour, 8 days at 4003,200.00
Works8,420.00
Gross profit1,135.2013%
VAT at 20%1,684.00
Client pays you10,104.00
Never leaves your phone
The real output for an example job. Scroll the lines if you want all twenty-nine of them. SiteBooks Demo Builders and David Jones are invented, the working is not.
You see the margin before you send it. They see a price they can understand.
All seven pages of the example quotation. Tap any of them to read it properly.
Those are demo figures on a made-up job. Yours runs on your rates, your markup, your payment terms and your VAT treatment, with your logo and your colours on the front of it. If you want materials at cost plus forty rather than plus twenty-eight, that is a setting, not a rebuild.
The rest of it Not just the quoting
The quote is about a third of what it does.
Everything a job throws off ends up in the same place, and you file none of it. Slide across for the rest.
A folder that fills itself
You never file anything. The folder is made the day the job arrives and everything after it lands where it belongs.
Receipts, photographed and gone
Photograph it on the forecourt. It is read, logged against the job and added to your expenses before you are back in the van.
Variations, agreed and recorded
The extra socket you agreed on the Tuesday goes on as its own line, with the date you agreed it and what it did to the total.
Invoices that keep track of themselves
Invoiced off the accepted quote, part payments included. It knows what has landed, what has not, and when to chase.
Site diary and snagging
What happened, what is still outstanding, and the photograph that proves it. All on the job, all in date order.
Workers and wages
Who was on site, how many hours, and what they are owed. It totals the week without you writing anything down.
Straight answers Before you ask
What it will not do.
Worth knowing up front, because these are the four questions everybody asks.
It won't send a quotation on its ownIt drafts, you check, you send. Nothing reaches a customer without you reading it first.
It won't invent a priceIf something is unpriced or missing, it tells you rather than guessing at it.
It won't replace your accountantQuotations, invoices, receipts and job records. Not professional accounting or tax advice.
It needs TelegramThat's where the voice notes and photographs go in. It's free and takes about a minute to set up.
Not off a shelf Where it came from
You can't buy this anywhere else.
Sitebooks isn't software we resell. We wrote it, on a construction business, to solve the problem that was costing that business money.
Which means it gets set up around how you work rather than the other way round. Your day rate. How many of you are on the tools. Your materials and your suppliers. Your uplift. Your VAT treatment. Your logo and your colour on the front of the quote.
- Your own copy, your own records, never mixed in with another firm's
- Built from your own supplier invoices before your setup call
- Your first real quote comes back live on that call, not weeks later
- Your data stays yours. If you ever leave, you leave with it
Illustration of an example job, not a real customer and not a screenshot.
What changes The part you'll feel
Your evenings stop belonging to the paperwork.
One
Quotes go out the same day
The quote you haven't written is a job you've already half lost. This one is written before you've had your tea.
Two
Nothing finished goes unbilled
Every job carries its own record, so the invoice comes off what actually happened rather than what you can still remember.
Three
You stop carrying it in your head
Where is that job up to is a question you can answer from your phone, standing in the queue at the merchant's.
£497 What it costs
Sitebooks comes with the £497 plan.
Cobalt Core on its own is £297 a month, and it catches and converts the enquiry. The £497 plan is Core plus Sitebooks, which takes on everything that happens after it.
Cobalt + Sitebooks
Run the job from your phone
£497a month
- Everything in Cobalt Core, and 200 receptionist minutes
- Sitebooks set to your prices, rules, tax settings and branding
- Quotes, variations, invoices, receipts, job diary and snagging
- It drafts, you check, nothing goes out unseen
Standard setup included. Three-month minimum, then monthly.
All prices exclude VAT. VAT is charged where applicable. Telephone-network usage, texts and any receptionist minutes beyond your plan are charged separately, at rates confirmed in writing before anything starts. Phone service is UK only at the moment.
Stop carrying your business around in your head.
Watch Sitebooks price a real job on a fifteen-minute call, or take the two-minute check first and see what the paperwork is costing you now.