As of 13 August 2026, AI can estimate project costs for a customer quote.

What to actually do

1. Hand it to a person

   The route this page recommends

   A person who owns the outcome does this end to end, worth it when the failure is dear.

2. Use a tool built for this

   Second choice

3. Do it yourself

   The distant third

   A chat interface, chat-fluent skill, and roughly 30 minutes until you can act on the result.

   How to actually do it

   1. Open the customer brief, your current price list, supplier quotes, labour rates and overhead allocation rule, then gather the versions that apply to this project.
   2. Paste the project scope and all available figures into the prompt, including quantities, labour time, subcontractor costs, expenses, VAT treatment and margin or markup rules.
   3. Ask the chatbot to produce the line-by-line schedule, totals, formulas, assumptions, missing inputs and customer questions specified in the prompt.
   4. Copy the output into a spreadsheet and recalculate every subtotal, total, VAT amount and selling price using your own formulas.
   5. Compare each source input against the current price list, supplier quote, labour rate and project scope, then replace or remove any figure the chatbot cannot trace to your records.
   6. Ask a colleague with responsibility for the work to check the scope, omitted costs, contingency and margin before you send the customer quote.

   Prompt

   Estimate the internal cost of this customer project in GBP and prepare a quote-ready cost schedule. Use only the information I provide and do not invent prices, quantities, labour hours, tax treatment or scope. If a required input is missing, mark it as missing and show how it affects the estimate rather than guessing.
   
   Project scope:
   [PASTE THE CUSTOMER SCOPE]
   
   Deliverables and quantities:
   [PASTE DELIVERABLES, UNITS AND QUANTITIES]
   
   Materials and supplier prices:
   [PASTE CURRENT MATERIAL COSTS, SUPPLIER PRICES AND UNIT SIZES]
   
   Labour:
   [PASTE ROLES, HOURLY OR DAILY RATES, HOURS OR DAYS, AND ANY MINIMUM CHARGES]
   
   Subcontractors and third-party costs:
   [PASTE COSTS AND TERMS]
   
   Overheads to allocate:
   [PASTE OVERHEAD RULE OR AMOUNT]
   
   Travel, delivery and other expenses:
   [PASTE COSTS OR STATE NONE]
   
   Contingency rule:
   [PASTE THE APPROVED RULE OR STATE NONE]
   
   VAT treatment:
   [PASTE THE VAT RATE OR STATE THAT THIS REQUIRES CONFIRMATION]
   
   Required margin or markup:
   [PASTE THE RULE OR STATE NONE]
   
   Produce:
   1. A line-by-line cost schedule with quantity, unit cost, subtotal and source of each input.
   2. Separate totals for direct costs, labour, subcontractors, expenses, overheads and contingency.
   3. The proposed selling price only if the supplied margin or markup rule is complete.
   4. A list of every assumption, omission and calculation that needs checking.
   5. A low, expected and high scenario only where I provide a range or a clear rule for creating one.
   6. A short list of questions to resolve with the customer before sending the quote.
   
   Show the formulas plainly, keep all amounts in GBP, distinguish net amounts from VAT, and do not present an estimate as final until the missing inputs and arithmetic have been checked.

   Open it prefilled in ChatGPT or Claude, or copy it into Gemini, which takes no prefill link.