Home Services & Contractors
Estimate Follow-Up
Stop losing approved-but-forgotten work — every open estimate follows up on a schedule you set, until it's accepted, declined, or expired.
Built for: Home-services and contracting businesses whose estimate close rate is a gut feeling, where nobody but the person who sent an estimate knows whether it's still alive.
Plan: Automated estimate follow-up is included on Forge Core. Estimator-level pipeline reporting across multiple locations is available on Forge Pro.
How does The Forge follow up on outstanding estimates automatically?
Every estimate carries a follow-up schedule and a time limit. Open estimates get automatic follow-up messages on the schedule you set, and when an estimate passes its follow-up window without a response, both the estimator and the office see it flagged — instead of relying on whoever remembers to check.
The problem
Estimates go out and are never followed up on. The only person who knows which estimates are still open is the person who sent them — and they're not always sure either — so real revenue sits unclaimed in the pipeline.
What it costs you
- Estimates age with no one tracking whether the customer already hired someone else.
- An estimator who leaves turns every one of their open proposals into a question mark.
- Close rate is reported as a feeling, not a number, so pricing and follow-up cadence can't be tuned.
- Customers who would have said yes with one more nudge are never nudged.
How The Forge addresses it
- 1
Estimate to scheduled work
An estimate is built from the site visit, sent to the customer, followed up automatically on a schedule you set, and — on approval — converted to a scheduled job with the crew, materials, and equipment already assigned.
- 2
Estimate-aging escalation
An estimate that crosses its follow-up window without a customer response flags the estimator and the office, instead of aging silently.
What managers can see
Open estimates and value
Every outstanding estimate, its age, the revenue attached, and whether follow-up is active or stalled.
Estimator — day to day
- • Conducting site visits and assessing scope
- • Building and sending estimates with accurate labor and material pricing
- • Following up on outstanding estimates
- • Converting approved estimates into scheduled jobs
What they see in The Forge
- Personal estimate pipeline with age, value, and follow-up status
- Site-visit notes and photos from the assessment
- Estimate-to-close ratio and average close time
- One-click conversion from approved estimate to scheduled job
Owner — what changes
- • Monitoring open pipeline value and close rate across estimators
- • Setting pricing and margin targets that estimates are built from
What they see in The Forge
- Open-estimate aging and total pipeline value
- Estimate close rate by estimator and by job type
What stays connected
- Estimating and takeoff tools
- Business phone and call-tracking systems
- Advertising and lead-generation platforms
Current connector status per app is tracked on the Integrations page.
What an estimator can and can't see
Estimator
- • Sees their own estimate pipeline, and team-wide open estimates only if granted
- • Can build, price, and send estimates
- • Cannot see technician-level labor cost or company-wide financial reporting
- • Change orders above a set value require manager approval before they submit
Related pages
See how The Forge would run estimate follow-up for your business.
Full $249 applies toward Managed Launch, an annual Core or Pro agreement, an approved integration, or migration assistance.