Best quoting software for UK trade and supply businesses in 2026

5 min read
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Zigaflow Editorial

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In short

Quoting tools split into proposal designers, enterprise CPQ and quote-to-job systems, and a business that buys or installs what it quotes needs the third kind. Before you buy, ask each vendor to show an accepted quote becoming a purchase order and invoice without retyping.

Which quoting software suits a UK business that supplies or installs what it quotes? The deciding factor is not the quote document but whether an accepted quote becomes the job, the purchase orders and the invoice.

If your business supplies or installs what it quotes, the shortlist for UK quoting software is short: a quote-to-job system such as Zigaflow, or a trade job-management app such as Tradify or ServiceM8 if you are a small team of engineers working mostly on labour. Proposal designers and enterprise CPQ tools are the wrong category. What separates the options is not how the quote looks. It is what happens in the minute after the customer says yes.

Three kinds of tool sell themselves as quoting software

Search for quoting software and you get three different products under one label.

Proposal designers build good-looking documents and capture a signature. Proposify, for example, describes itself as a proposal management platform with drag-and-drop editing, e-signatures and engagement tracking, and prices per user per year in US dollars. That suits a consultancy selling hours. The document is the deliverable.

CPQ for enterprise sales (configure, price, quote) enforces pricing rules, discount thresholds and approval routing for complex deals. Salesforce describes CPQ as a front end to contracts, billing and renewals, and lists its Revenue Cloud Growth edition at £120 per user per month on an annual contract. That is built for sales teams with subscription and usage-based pricing and a revenue operations function to run it. A twelve-person installer has neither.

Quote-to-job systems treat the accepted quote as the start of the work. Tradify, ServiceM8 and Zigaflow sit here, with different centres of gravity. Tradify and ServiceM8 start from the tradesperson's day: scheduling, site visits, timesheets, card payments. Zigaflow starts from the thing being bought, made or installed: the products, the suppliers, the purchase orders and the delivery.

The test: does the quote become the job?

If you buy, make or install what you quote, the quote contains a bill of materials, whether you call it that or not. Forty line items might need ordering from six suppliers, delivering in a sequence, installing, and then invoicing in stages. When the quote lives in a tool that stops at "accepted", someone retypes it. Quantities drift, a price from the revised version never reaches the purchase order, and the invoice reflects a third version of the truth. We have written about this before in when the quote, the job record and the invoice tell three different stories.

So the question to put to every vendor is concrete: after acceptance, what exists without anyone retyping anything? You want a job or order with the same lines, supplier purchase orders raised from those lines, and an invoice that matches what was agreed.

What each option actually does

Zigaflow's quotes carry customer-specific pricing, tiered pricing and VAT, e-signature acceptance with open tracking, and live supplier price feeds so costs stay current. An accepted quote converts to a job, purchase order or invoice, and automations can do that on acceptance. Margin is visible from quote stage through to invoice, so you can compare what you quoted with what you bought. The comparison with quoting software sets out the gap in detail.

Tradify's published plans put quote options, online acceptance, progress invoicing and quote reminders on its Pro plan, and purchase orders generated from quotes plus kit bundles on its Plus plan. Its pricing page did not show a price in the text we read, so check the figure with them. It is a sensible fit for a trade business whose cost is mostly labour with some materials.

ServiceM8's pricing page lists quote follow-ups, multiple quote options, online and on-site signature, job costing, and supplier quotes or invoices emailed straight into a job. It also lists GPS staff tracking and route optimisation. Again, no price appeared in the text we read. If dispatching engineers is your hardest problem, it deserves a look.

Where Zigaflow does not fit

Zigaflow is not an accounting package and does not replace one. It integrates with Xero, QuickBooks and FreeAgent. It is not an ERP, and it does not do manufacturing resource planning. Its published pages emphasise buying, jobs and invoicing rather than live GPS dispatch, so a business whose main need is routing a van fleet should weigh that. And if you only send occasional one-off proposals with no stock, suppliers or installation behind them, a proposal designer will do the job for less.

What it costs

Zigaflow's pricing is published in pounds, excluding tax. Essentials is £79 a month with one user included and £69 for each additional user, so three users cost £217. Go is £199 with two users included and £79 for each additional user. Momentum is £399 with three users included and £89 for each additional user. Essentials includes quotes, jobs and orders, purchase orders, delivery notes and invoices. All plans carry unlimited quote sending, a 14-day free trial, and a free one-hour onboarding session. See the pricing page for current limits and add-ons.

Per-user pricing matters in a trade business, because the people who need a login are not only salespeople. Office staff raising purchase orders and whoever approves invoices need one too. Count them before you compare headline prices.

A short way to decide

  1. List what happens after acceptance in your business: ordering, delivery, installation, staged invoicing.
  2. Ask each vendor to show an accepted quote becoming a purchase order and an invoice, with your own products, in the trial.
  3. Count every user who touches the quote after it is sent.
  4. Check which plan the features you need sit on, since quote features and purchase orders are often on different tiers.
  5. Ask what leaves the system for your accounts package, and how.

A vendor that cannot show step two without retyping has told you which category it belongs to.

Common questions

If you quote a fixed price for work you will buy materials for, order from suppliers or install in stages, you need the quote to become a job with purchase orders and invoices attached. A quoting app that stops at acceptance leaves someone retyping lines into another system. If you send occasional proposals for time only, a simple proposal tool is cheaper and sufficient.

Sources

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