$2,400 a Year in Short Quotes: A Claude Code Skill for Quoting and Estimates
One quote a month that goes out $200 under your real cost is $2,400 lost over 12 months. A Claude Code skill for quoting and estimates builds each quote from your own price list and checks it for the lines you tend to forget, before you send it.
💸 The cost: $ short per quote x short quotes a month x 12.
🧾 The skill: Builds the quote from your rates. Flags missing lines and thin margin.
⏱️ The test: $250 pays back in about 1.3 months at one $200 miss a month.
What does one short quote a month cost over 12 months?
Multiply what each short quote missed by how many go out a month, then by 12. One $50 miss a month is $600 a year, one $200 miss is $2,400, and two $500 misses a month is $12,000.
Try your own numbers
Think of a real job you under-quoted. Put in the gap between what you charged and what it cost you.
At 1 short quote a month, $200 short each, you lose $2,400 over 12 months.
Think of a pilot's checklist: the crew flies the same plane every day and still reads the list. The costly miss is never the hard step, it is the one everyone knows and forgot.
What a quoting skill does
A skill is a folder of written steps Claude Code follows. It can carry a script, so the sums are done by code and the same job gives the same total.
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📒 2. It picks line items from your own price list
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🧮 3. A script adds labour, materials and your margin
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🔍 4. It checks your list of lines you often forget, like travel or disposal
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🚩 5. It flags any total under your margin floor
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📤 6. You read the draft and send it yourself
What stays with you
| Job | The skill | You |
|---|---|---|
| Prices and rates | Reads your file | Keep it current |
| Line items | Drafts them | Check them |
| Usual lines left out | Flags them | Add or skip |
| Margin under your floor | Flags it | Decide |
| Sending the quote | Never | Always |
Core insight: the skill drafts and stops. No quote reaches a customer until you send it.
When it does not pay
Divide $250 by what your short quotes lose in a month. If the answer is more than 12, leave quoting as it is.
Build
- One quote a month $200 short: back in about 1.3 months
- Two a month $50 short: back in about 2.5 months
Skip
- One quote a month $20 short: over 12 months
- Your quoting app already holds every line and margin rule
What does it cost to get one?
You can write one yourself for free with our step-by-step skill guide. Or stop the leak for a fixed $250, with the scope written before I start: get a custom Claude Code skill built.
This is the scope I would write, not a case study. The build service is new and has no independent case study yet.
- Scripts in skills: Claude Code skills docs, code.claude.com/docs/en/skills ("Skills can bundle and run scripts in any language").
- $250 fixed: the custom build page.
- Every other figure: arithmetic on example amounts you overwrite, not survey data.
Related: a skill for invoice chasing, a skill for bookkeeping reconciliation and how many hours a skill saves.
Stop pricing jobs under cost
Send the chore. You get a written scope first, then a fixed $250 build.
Get a written scope