Introducing LimbQuote

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

Why this exists

Tree crews are good at taking down trees 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 work. Quote from your gut and you underbid the tree over the roof by the power line, 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 size tiers, hazard multipliers, or per-inch stump grinding, so you end up doing the tree 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.

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

What it does

You build a quote by adding each tree. Pick the size on a height gauge, the four silhouettes that scale from small to extra-large, so you are choosing a tier, not typing a number. Tap the hazards that apply: near a structure, near power lines, limited access, dead or hazardous. Each one applies your multiplier, in a fixed order, so the risk lands in the price the same way every time. Snap a photo of the tree and it rides along on the quote so the customer sees exactly what you are pricing.

Add the stumps by diameter and the engine applies your per-inch rate and your per-stump minimum. Add cleanup: debris haul, log removal, travel, lot clearing. Toggle an emergency or storm job and the uplift applies to the service work but not to pass-through costs like a crane. The running total sits at the bottom of the screen the whole time, so there are no surprises.

When it is ready, one tap sends a branded quote to the customer by email, with a link to a clean web page and a PDF attached. The customer opens it, reviews the trees and the totals, and accepts online by typing their name. You get the accept, with the name, the time, and a record, and a fresh PDF with the signature block. The whole thing, from "new quote" to "sent," takes about four minutes for a typical job.

The prices are yours

The default price book ships with national rough averages so you are not starting from a blank page, but every number is yours to change. Removal and trim tiers, the per-inch stump rate and its minimum, every add-on, and each hazard multiplier: set them once to match how you actually bid, and every quote after that uses your numbers. The averages are a starting point, not a straitjacket.

That matters because tree pricing is local and personal. Your market, your equipment, your appetite for the dangerous jobs, all of it lives in your multipliers. LimbQuote gives you a place to encode your judgment once, so a lead can build a quote that prices the same way you would, without watching your margin walk off the job.

What it does not try to be

LimbQuote is deliberately narrow. It is not going to schedule your crews, run your payroll, or manage your equipment maintenance. It does not pretend to be a CRM. There are good tools for those jobs, and bolting them onto a quoting app would make the quoting worse, which is the one thing this app is for.

It is also honest by design. There are no fabricated logos on the marketing page, no invented customer counts, and no features advertised that do not exist in the product. When something is on the Crew plan and not on Solo, the page says so. When a feature is coming, it is not pretended to be here.

Built in the open, supported by the person who built it

LimbQuote is built solo, as one of a small series of trade-specific quoting tools. That has a practical upside for you: when you have a question or hit a rough edge, the support goes straight to the person who wrote the code, not to a queue. The roadmap is driven by what tree contractors actually run into, and this blog is where the pricing thinking behind the app gets written down, so you can use the ideas whether or not you use the tool.

Getting started

There is a 14-day free trial. It needs a card so that billing just works when the trial ends, but you can cancel anytime and keep access to the end of the period, and there is a money-back window on the first paid invoice. The fastest way to see whether it fits is to build one real quote: add the trees from a job you are looking at, tap the hazards, add the stumps and cleanup, and send it to yourself. If it is faster and more professional than what you do now, that is the whole pitch.

Tree work deserves a quoting tool that understands trees. That is what LimbQuote is. Welcome, and if you have ideas for what it should do next, the contact page goes straight to the person who can build it.