Estimates, the price book and the photo quote

The price book

Services & prices is the single list of what you charge. Setup fills it with a starter list for your trade so you are editing rather than typing, and every price elsewhere in Aestar comes from here. Change a number once and the estimate form, the invoice and Ava all move together.

Here is roughly what a hvac shop's opening list looks like before they touch it:

Building an estimate

Pick services off the price book, set quantities, add a note about anything unusual. Then Copy portal link and send that link to the customer however you normally reach them. They get a private page where they can read the estimate and approve or decline it themselves — no printing, no "did you get my email".

The photo quote

A customer can send photos of what is wrong, and Aestar turns them into a scope. Your price book supplies the money — it never invents a labour rate. You get a draft with a photo strip, the scope it read, a breakdown down to contingency, and a confidence label. From there you Approve it into a real estimate, send it back for a visit, reprice it after editing the hours, or decline it.

You start it with Queue photo request, which mints a private upload link for that customer. The word queue is doing real work: the link is created and waiting, and nobody is texted it. Copy it and send it yourself, the same as an estimate.

Approved means scheduled

An approved estimate turns into a job, and the finished job turns into an invoice, without anybody retyping the line items.

Quotes that went quiet

Estimates that have been sitting show up in one list with how long they have waited and what they are worth, so the follow-up is a decision rather than an archaeology project.