Introducing PicketQuote

PicketQuote is a quoting tool built for one trade: fence contractors. Not a generic "field service platform," not a CRM with a fencing add-on, but a focused app that does the specific job of turning a walk of the property into a clean, branded, signable fence quote in minutes. This is the first post on the blog, so it is worth saying plainly what PicketQuote is, why it exists, and what it does not try to be.

Why this exists

Fence installers are good at building fences and, understandably, less excited about paperwork. Yet the quote is where the job is won or lost. Quote too slow and a faster competitor takes the job. Quote by hand and you forget the concrete, the post caps, or the gate, and the margin leaks out of the bottom of the estimate. Quote from a generic template and it looks like every other contractor's, so the customer decides on price alone.

The common tools do not fit. A spreadsheet is fast but fragile, and it never looks professional to the customer. A general-purpose invoicing app does not understand posts, rails, pickets, and gates, so you end up doing the fence math yourself anyway. The big field-service suites are built for companies with an office manager, priced accordingly, and full of features a two-person crew will never touch.

PicketQuote is the tool in between: it knows fences, it is fast enough to use on a tailgate, and it produces a quote the customer can accept online.

What it does

The core loop is simple. You set up your price book once, with your own rates for each fence type, your gate prices, and your add-ons. Then, for each job, you enter the runs, gates, and extras as you walk the property, and PicketQuote does the arithmetic you would have done by hand.

• Segment-based pricing. Enter a fence run by length, type, and height, and the engine computes material and labor from your price book. Add slope or rocky-soil conditions and it prices the difficulty instead of pretending every yard is flat.
• Gates as real line items. A walk gate or a double drive gate drops in at your installed price, as its own line, so you never bury gate labor inside a per-foot rate again.
• A materials list you can shop from. Every quote produces a bill of materials, posts, rails, pickets, concrete, so the number you quote and the list you buy from stay in sync.
• Markup and deposit, handled. Set your materials markup and your deposit percentage, and the quote shows the subtotal, the markup, the total, and the deposit to book the job.
• A branded, signable quote. The customer gets a clean quote with your business on it and can accept it online, so the job gets booked while they are still excited about the fence.

Everything runs from your own numbers. PicketQuote does not decide what a fence should cost; you do. The software just does the same estimating you already do, faster and without the missed bag of concrete.

What it is not

Being honest about what a tool does means being honest about what it does not do. PicketQuote is new, and it is deliberately narrow.

• It is not a scheduling and dispatch suite. It quotes; it does not run your calendar or route your crews.
• It is not an accounting package. It figures the quote and the deposit; it does not replace your bookkeeper.
• It does not pretend to have a decade of customers or a wall of logos it has not earned. It is an honest, focused tool at the start of its life, and it would rather do the quoting job well than claim to do everything.

If you need a full back-office platform, PicketQuote is not that, and that is on purpose. If you need to quote fence jobs fast and accurately, that is exactly what it is for.

Who it is for

PicketQuote is built for the working fence contractor: the solo installer and the small crew who win jobs by being fast, accurate, and professional. If you have ever lost a job because your quote landed three days late, or eaten the cost of a gate you forgot to price, or watched a customer choose on price because your estimate looked like a napkin, this is built for you.

What is next

This is the beginning. The blog will cover real fence-pricing and fence-business topics, the kind of thing that helps you quote better and run a tighter operation, not filler. The product will grow based on what actually helps installers close jobs, and product updates will land here so you always know what changed and why.

If you want to see how it prices a job, the pricing page lays out the plans and what each includes. PicketQuote is here to do one thing well: help you quote fence jobs fast, at the right price, and win more of them.