The 9-Stage Job Pipeline for Tradies
Inquiry, quoted, accepted, scheduled, in progress, completed, paid, closed. The job lifecycle every tradie runs in their head — made visible on your phone.
Or try it on the web →Every tradie already runs a job pipeline in their head: someone called, you quoted, they accepted, you scheduled it, you did the work, you sent the invoice, they paid you. The trouble is keeping all that in your head across 30 active jobs. QuoteMate makes the pipeline a real thing on your phone — nine stages, automatic timestamps, a single dashboard view of where every job sits.
The nine stages, and why each one matters
Inquiry is a job created with no quote yet — the phone-call-from-the-fence-bay you'd otherwise lose. Quoted is a quote sent. Accepted is the customer's signature back, with or without a deposit. Scheduled is a start date locked in. In Progress is the actual start date stamped on the day you turn up. Completed is the work done, invoice ready. Paid is the invoice settled in full. Closed is the terminal archived state. Cancelled is the job that died — recorded with a reason so you can spot patterns over time. Every stage transition writes a timestamp, so you can see exactly how long jobs sit waiting on each one.
Why timestamps beat 'I think it was a few weeks ago'
If you can't see how long a quote sits in 'sent' before it converts, you can't see your real follow-up window. If you can't see how long jobs sit in 'completed' before they get paid, you can't see your real cash-flow lag. QuoteMate stamps every stage transition automatically, so the dashboard can show you the median quote-to-accept time, the median complete-to-paid time, and the jobs sitting longer than usual at each stage. That's how you find the slow-paying customers, the quotes worth chasing, and the bottlenecks costing you days.
Cancelled jobs are data too
When a job dies, QuoteMate prompts you for a cancellation reason — price, scope changed, customer ghosted, lost to a competitor, not the right fit. After 50 cancelled jobs, you'll see whether you're losing on price (raise your offer's perceived value) or scope (tighten your quoting questions). That's harder data than asking 'why are people saying no' and trying to remember. The cancelled stage is terminal — it doesn't sit in your live pipeline — but the record stays for analysis and for re-quoting the customer 12 months later when they come back.
Pipeline view on the dashboard
The dashboard's pipeline section shows live counts at each stage with the dollar value sitting in each. You can see at a glance: $14,200 quoted but not accepted (chase candidates), $8,400 accepted but not scheduled (book these in this week), $11,900 completed but not paid (send the reminder). It's the same pipeline a sales manager would build for a B2B sales team, scaled down for one ute. The Insights screen layers monthly comparisons on top so you can see whether the pipeline is growing or shrinking month over month.
Frequently Asked Questions
Most stages move automatically — sending a quote stamps the Quoted stage, the customer accepting stamps Accepted, scheduling a date stamps Scheduled. You can also move stages manually from the job actions sheet if you need to.
Yes. Every stage transition writes a timestamp, so the dashboard can show you medians like 'quote-to-accept: 4.2 days' and flag jobs sitting longer than usual.
Cancelled jobs are recorded with a reason and archived. They stay in the database for analysis (so you can spot patterns) and for re-quoting later, but they don't clog your live pipeline view.
No. Most tradies live in five — Quoted, Accepted, Scheduled, In Progress, Paid. Closed is just an archive for jobs you've stopped tracking. Inquiry is optional if you don't want to log phone-call leads before quoting.
Yes. Push notifications fire when a customer accepts a quote, when an invoice is paid, and when an invoice goes overdue. Notification preferences are in Settings.