How to set up quote follow-ups in ServiceM8

ServiceM8 will chase your quotes for you. It is free, it is on every plan, and most Perth trade businesses we look at have never switched it on.

This page is how to set it up properly: the menu path, a schedule that works, what to write in each message, and the settings that quietly stop it working. At the end there is an honest bit about where it stops helping, because that part matters more than the setup.

We run a quote-chasing service, so you would expect us to tell you the built-in tool is no good. It is good. Use it.

What it actually does

Once it is on, every quote you send gets followed up automatically, by SMS or email or both, on a schedule you set.

• Up to five follow-ups per quote.
• You pick the timing for each one: hours or days after the quote goes out.
• You write the message template for each one, once.
• Each SMS uses a text credit on your plan. Emails do not.
• It can also mark a quote Unsuccessful automatically after a period you choose. More on that below, because the default here causes trouble.

Turning it on

1. On a computer, open ServiceM8.
2. Go to Settings > ServiceM8 Add-ons and enable Automation.
3. Go to Settings > Automation.
4. Find Quote Follow Up and click Edit.
5. Choose how many follow-ups you want, up to five, and set the channel and timing for each.
6. Write the message for each follow-up. Save.

That is the whole setup. It takes about fifteen minutes if you have your wording ready, which is the next section.

A schedule that works

There is no single right answer here and anyone who gives you a percentage is making it up. What follows is how we would set it, and why.

The reasoning, briefly. The first one is not a chase, it is a delivery check, and it catches the quotes that went to spam or to the wrong half of a couple. Days 3 and 7 are when they are still deciding and still talking to other trades. Day 14 is when the job has usually stalled on money or timing, so that is the one where you give them somewhere to go other than silence. Day 21 ends it. Past three weeks you are annoying people, and the quote is either dead or it will come back on its own months later.

Alternate SMS and email. A text gets read, an email can carry the detail, and mixing them stops the whole thing feeling like one automated drip.

What to write

Short. Plain. From you, not from a marketing department. Put your own business name in, and use whatever merge fields ServiceM8 offers you for the customer's name and the quote.

Hi {recipient_first}, [your business] here. Just sent through the quote for {job.description} to your email. Give us a yell if it hasn't turned up or if anything on it doesn't make sense.

Hi {recipient_first},

Just checking you got the quote for {job.description} on {job.quote_date}.

Happy to walk you through any of it, or to break the price down line by line if that helps. Some people want to stage the work rather than do the lot at once, and that is usually an option too.

Either way, let me know how you want to go.

[your name], [your business]

Hi {recipient_first}, [your business]. Any thoughts on the quote? Even a "not yet" is useful, it just tells me whether to hold the spot in the calendar.

That last line does the work. You are not asking them to buy, you are asking them a question that costs them nothing to answer, and a reply of any kind restarts the conversation.

Hi {recipient_first},

Following up on the quote for {job.description}.

If it is the price or the timing that is holding it up, say so and I will tell you honestly whether there is anything I can do. Sometimes there is, sometimes there isn't, but it is a quick conversation either way.

If you have gone with someone else, no hard feelings at all, just let me know so I stop bothering you.

[your name], [your business]

Hi {recipient_first}, last one from me on that quote. If the timing is off, tell me when to come back and I will. Otherwise all the best with it.

A note on what not to write. Do not invent a deadline that is not real, do not offer a discount that expires when it does not, and do not say "just bumping this to the top of your inbox". Tradies get sold to all day and they can smell it. The reason the messages above work is that they are what you would actually text someone.

The settings that quietly stop it working

This is the part nobody reads, and it is why plenty of businesses have the automation switched on and still have a pile of unchased quotes.

Follow-ups cancel automatically when:

• The customer replies, and you have not yet responded to or dismissed that reply. The sequence stays paused until you do.
• The customer accepts the quote online.
• The job status changes to Work Order, Completed or Unsuccessful.
• Someone on your team cancels it manually from the job's Diary.
• The quote is re-sent to a contact that is not saved on the job.

The first one catches people out constantly. A customer writes back "how much to do the shed as well", it sits in the inbox for a fortnight, and because nobody responded or dismissed it, the remaining follow-ups never fire. The quote goes quiet and the system looks like it is working.

And the Unsuccessful setting. ServiceM8 can auto-mark quotes Unsuccessful after a period you choose, and it is switched on by default at 60 days. Set that short and you will bury live work. A patio quote from six weeks ago is not dead, it is waiting on a tax return or a partner. We would leave it off, or set it well out at 90 days, and make the decision yourself. A quote you never marked dead is a quote you can still win.

Where it stops helping

Everything above is worth doing and it will win you jobs. Here is what it does not do, so you know what you are still carrying.

It only applies from the day you switch it on. Every quote sitting in your job list right now, the ones from two and six and twelve weeks ago, is not in the sequence and never will be. For most businesses that backlog is worth more than the next month of new quotes.

It sends the template, whatever the situation. The same words go to the retired couple and to the builder who has quoted you three times this year. Nobody reads the message before it goes.

It does not handle the reply. It pauses, and waits for you. The reply is the whole point of sending the follow-up, and it lands in the same inbox as everything else at 4pm on a Thursday.

It cannot tell you what it was worth. At the end of the month there is no figure. You cannot see which jobs you won because of a follow-up, so you cannot tell whether any of this is working.

None of that is a criticism of ServiceM8. It is a scheduler, and it is a good one. Those four things are just work, and the work still belongs to someone.

If you would rather not do it yourself

That is what we do. Backdesk chases every open quote you send, by text and email, in your own voice, until it is won or dead, with a person checking every message before it goes. At the end of the month you get one page: what was chased, what was won, and what came back in dollars against what you paid us. Perth trade businesses on ServiceM8, one to ten staff.

Before any of that there is a free Quote Leakage Audit: one A4 page from your own ServiceM8 data showing quotes sent in the last 90 days, how much of it never got a follow-up, and what is likely recoverable. Ten minutes of your time, no cost, no obligation.

If you have set the automation up properly using this page, the audit should come back close to empty, and we will tell you so and leave you alone. That is a perfectly good outcome and it costs you nothing to find out.

Get the free audit

Backdesk is independent and is not affiliated with ServiceM8. Setup steps were accurate as at 15 September 2026; ServiceM8 changes its interface from time to time, so check against the app.