Tradify for Electricians: Quotes, Jobs and AI SmartTools Set-Up

Start the 14-day trial, connect your accounting, import your wholesaler's price list as a CSV, build five quote templates, then run one dummy job from enquiry to invoice. SmartTools (SmartRead for bills, SmartWrite) cost $10 more per user a month on Plus than Pro, and they pay back only if you process enough supplier bills and quotes.

Tradify's own pages say what each plan includes, but not whether SmartTools earn their place in an electrical business. That depends on how many wholesaler bills you key in each month, how often quote descriptions get rewritten, and how much correcting the tools need. The trial includes every feature, so the test costs nothing if it is planned before the clock starts.

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What Plus adds over Pro, priced for one, two and five users

These are Tradify's USD list prices per user per month, from its main pricing page in November 2026. Other regions show their own currency and amounts, so open your own region's page before you compare. The pricing page does not say whether billing is monthly or annual, while the electrical page describes month-to-month billing with no contracts.

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Read the steps between the plans, not the totals. Lite to Pro costs $4 more per user and adds the templates, online acceptance, progress invoicing, reminders, costing and timesheets that an electrical quote needs. Pro to Plus costs $10 more per user and adds SmartTools together with a block of other features. For a two-person firm the Plus uplift is $20 a month, and at $60 an hour of your own time that breaks even at 20 minutes saved a month. The sum is short, which is why the real question is not price but whether the tools save anything once you correct them. The Plus extras you can judge by looking at them; SmartTools are the part that needs a test.

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Setting up in the order that avoids rework

1. Start the trial when paperwork is waiting. The trial runs 14 days and, according to Tradify's pages, needs no credit card and includes all features. Begin with 15 or so supplier bills and ten live quotes to process, since those feed the SmartTools test later.
2. Enter business details and choose a document theme (10 minutes). Tradify offers themes and templates for quotes and invoices. Set your logo and colours once and leave them.
3. Connect accounting before importing anything (20 minutes). Xero and QuickBooks Online sync on every plan. The vendor says an accepted quote's status syncs to your accounting software and invoice numbers sync too, so connect first and avoid duplicated numbering. The pricing page does not mention MYOB, so ask if that is yours.
4. Import your supplier price list (30 to 60 minutes). Tradify accepts a supplier's list only as a CSV file, so preparing the file is the real work. The next section covers it.
5. Build five quote templates (60 minutes). The pricing page lists quote and invoice templates from Pro upwards, and the quoting page describes pre-saved templates with a preloaded description and line items, editable per quote. Two sections on, you will find the five worth building first.
6. Switch on follow-ups and reminders. Quote and invoice reminders sit on Pro and Plus. Tradify sends follow-up emails automatically and overdue reminders by email, and the invoicing FAQ says text messages can be used too. Write the wording once and keep it civil.
7. Add people and timesheets. Each extra user adds a seat to the price, and timesheets are Pro and Plus. Add staff only after the templates work, so they do not learn a half-built system.
8. Run one dummy job end to end. Enquiry, quote, acceptance by the emailed link or on-site signature in the mobile app, scheduling, time and materials, invoice, sync to accounts. Fix whatever breaks before a real customer sees it.

That is roughly four hours of set-up spread over the first three days of the trial, leaving the remaining eleven for live quotes and the SmartTools test. The alternative, trying to evaluate Tradify on fake data, tells you very little about whether it suits your work.

Getting a wholesaler price list into the CSV import

Wholesaler price lists often run to thousands of lines, most of which you will never buy. Import the few hundred items you actually use, because a huge list slows quoting and hides the item you want. Open the list in a spreadsheet, delete the rest, and keep four columns: code, description, unit and cost. Check the exact column names on Tradify's import screen during the trial, since the vendor's pages do not list them. Pricing and markups appear on every plan's feature list, so also check there whether the list should carry your cost price, your selling price or both.

code,description,unit,cost
00412,2.5 mm cable,100 m,118.00
00413,1.5 mm cable,100 m,74.00
01207,Single socket outlet white,each,2.10
01208,Double socket outlet white,each,3.40
02550,10-way consumer unit,each,310.00

Two traps are specific to electrical lists. The first is the unit. Cable is often priced per 100 m, and if the unit is lost in conversion, a 40 m run costs 40 times 118.00, which is 4,720.00, instead of 40 times 1.18, which is 47.20. A slip that size gets noticed. A smaller one does not: a 50 m coil priced as though it were 100 m doubles or halves a cost and still looks plausible on a quote. The second is leading zeros: a code like 00412 turns into 412 when a spreadsheet treats the column as numbers, so format the column as text before saving. Codes that no longer match the wholesaler's own are a nuisance at the counter.

A chat assistant can tidy a short list quickly if the rules are tight. For a longer one, filter in a spreadsheet first or follow the site tutorial on cleaning messy data.

Here is a wholesaler price list as CSV. Return it as CSV with these columns only: code, description, unit, cost. Rules: keep codes as text including leading zeros; do not change any price; keep each unit exactly as the source states it; delete blank rows. List separately, without fixing, any row whose cost looks like a typo (more than ten times or less than a tenth of similar items).
[paste 30 rows]

A typical reply obeys most of this and breaks the rest. In an illustrative run, it dropped the leading zeros on two codes and "corrected" a socket price from 2.10 to 21.0, treating a decimal as a typo, in spite of the instruction to change nothing. It also listed three suspect rows separately, which was useful. Compare the output with the source for every code and every price in the first 30 rows, restore what changed, and only then import the rest from the original file.

Five electrical quote templates to build first

Draft the wording for these once with a chat assistant, then paste it into the templates and edit. Ask it for descriptions only: no rates, no warranties and no statements about regulations, which differ by place and are yours to supply. The tutorial on an electrician quote template for scope and exclusions covers the scope and exclusions wording in more depth, and Tradify's quoting page confirms that templates can hold a preloaded description and line items you adjust for each job.

One template filled in: a switchboard replacement

Template: Replace main switchboard
Description: Supply and fit a new 10-way unit with protective devices; connect existing circuits; test and issue the paperwork required where you work.
Labour: 6.0 hours at 85.00                     510.00
Unit and devices (from price list)             340.00
Cable, labels and fixings                       45.00
Total before tax                               895.00
Exclusions: remedial work found during testing, quoted separately before it starts; making good decoration and plaster; moving the unit; faults in the existing wiring beyond the circuits listed.
Option A: 10-way unit (as above)   Option B: 12-way unit, add 38.00

The optional line matters, because Tradify lets a customer accept or decline quote options and add optional sections (Quote Options and Online Acceptance are listed from Pro upwards), so you can offer a larger unit without rewriting the quote. The pricing and the exclusions are yours; Tradify adds the tax according to your settings, and the quoting page says quotes become invoices in seconds once accepted. Progress invoices can then be raised from the quote as a percentage, a fixed amount or a single line, and the page lists deposits and scheduled payments too.

On Plus, the pricing page also lists Kit Bundles, described as parts and labour bundles for easy quoting. The unit, devices, cable and labels in the example above are the obvious candidate for one bundle. The vendor gives only that one-line description, so build one bundle during the trial and see whether it saves clicks before you count it in the uplift.

Electricians will want to know about certificates. Tradify's electrician page does not mention certificates or compliance forms, so assume they stay in a separate app until you have seen otherwise during the trial. The tutorial on electrical certification apps lists what to check before paying for one.

The SmartTools value test, run inside the 14-day trial

SmartTools are two features. Tradify's page says SmartRead lets you snap a photo of any invoice so that Tradify extracts the details, and that SmartWrite corrects spelling and grammar, tidies formatting and generates descriptions from quote and invoice line items, in a tone you choose (friendly or professional). The pricing page marks them "Available on our Plus plan only". Here is the test, in six steps.

1. Before starting the trial, pick the test set: 15 recent supplier bills from your three main suppliers and 12 quote descriptions you would normally write.
2. Time yourself entering five bills by hand to get a baseline. Suppose it is 4 minutes each.
3. Run the bills through SmartRead, review each, and log the minutes and any wrong field: supplier, date, total, line items.
4. Do the same with SmartWrite on the 12 descriptions: minutes, edits made and any sentence you had to delete.
5. Count silent errors separately. These are mistakes you only spotted on a second look, and they are the dangerous kind.
6. Multiply the saving per item by your monthly volume and compare it with the uplift.

Scale it to a month. Forty supplier bills at an average of 2.33 minutes with the tool (35 divided by 15) against 4 by hand saves about 67 minutes. Twenty quotes saves 30 minutes. That is about 97 minutes a month, which at $60 an hour is roughly $97 against a $20 uplift for two users. At those assumptions the uplift pays back nearly five times over, and even half the saving would cover it. Treat the figures as a template for your own test, because the corrections rate decides everything.

Three conditions should all hold before you pay for Plus. The time saved at your hourly rate must be at least twice the uplift. No total or supplier name may have slipped through unnoticed, since a bill posted at 1,180.00 instead of 118.00 costs more than a month of savings. And the edits should not take more than about half the items, because if SmartWrite text needs rewriting as often as not, you are paying for a rough draft you could get free. Rewritten text can drift from your original in meaning as well as tone, so assume every SmartWrite insert needs one read before you save it.

SmartWrite against a free chat assistant: where each wins

Here is the kind of output to test for. Feed SmartWrite the line items for the switchboard job, such as "CU change 10 way, labour 6 h, test, make good", and ask for a customer-ready description. An illustrative result:

Supply and installation of a new 10-way consumer unit, including full testing and all necessary certification. Existing wiring will be inspected for faults and any issues reported.

The first sentence is fine if it matches the template. The second is the trap. "All necessary certification" may or may not be in your price, so keep it only if the template says so. And "existing wiring will be inspected for faults and any issues reported" promises an inspection you never priced and creates a duty to report, so delete it and use your own exclusion wording. A tool that writes plausible commitments is still writing commitments, so read every sentence as if a customer will quote it back, because one day one might.

The honest summary is that SmartWrite wins on convenience and a chat assistant wins on control. If your descriptions follow a fixed house style with exclusions and bans, a Project in a chat assistant fed with that style will outperform a tone setting. If you mostly want fewer typos and a tidier layout inside the quote screen, SmartWrite is enough. The tutorials on Tradify against Fergus for plumbers and electricians and on whether an app or ChatGPT is enough cover the same choice from other angles.

SmartRead has no free equivalent that writes into Tradify, and supplier bills are the easiest saving to measure, so test it first. The tutorial on capturing van receipts and supplier bills with AI in Xero shows the same job in accounting software, which is the main alternative.

Plus is more than SmartTools: scoring the other features

Tradify's pricing page lists these as Plus-only alongside SmartRead for Bills and SmartWrite: Service Reminders (automatic reminders for services and scheduled maintenance), Job Tasks, Purchase Orders (custom orders, or generated from quotes and sent to the supplier), Bulk Invoicing (billing runs), Kit Bundles, Staff Activity History, Job Service Reports and Reporting. An electrician will not use all of them. Score the ones you would, in the same minutes-saved terms as the SmartTools.

On those assumptions kit bundles and purchase orders alone save about 76 minutes a month against 97 for the two SmartTools, so the uplift can be justified without SmartRead at all. The figures are guesses to replace with your own, and the reverse is just as possible: a firm that raises a handful of orders a month and quotes from a short price list gains nothing from either. Decide each feature on its own score, and pay for Plus when the total clears twice the uplift.

Applying the result to three firm sizes

A sole trader's main decision is Lite against Pro. Pro costs $4 more a month and adds templates, quote options, progress invoicing and the reminders that do most of the chasing. At $60 an hour, $4 is four minutes of your time, so Pro repays itself if reminders get one invoice paid a few days sooner or one quote answered. SmartTools only enter the picture if you also process more than a handful of bills a month.

A two-person firm, an owner and one employee, pays $102 on Pro or $122 on Plus. The SmartRead test matters most here, because the owner is often the one keying in bills at night. At the test figures above, SmartRead saves about 1.67 minutes a bill, so roughly a dozen bills a month covers the $20 uplift at $60 an hour, and the rest is margin.

A five-person crew pays $255 on Pro or $305 on Plus, a $50 uplift. Settle the per-user question first: if every user needs Plus and only the office person touches bills, the saving has to cover five seats. Ask Tradify in writing whether SmartTools can be limited to one user, and weigh that against a chat assistant for the descriptions, which costs nothing per head.

A 14-day trial calendar for a working electrician

The calendar front-loads the set-up because the dummy job is what exposes a missing template or a broken sync, and it leaves a full working week for the test. Start on a Monday so that days 4 to 10 hold a normal flow of bills and quotes. If the trial runs out before you have decided, ask Tradify whether an extension is possible instead of paying for a month to finish the test; the vendor's pages do not say either way.

What the vendor pages leave out, to settle in the trial

Tradify's help centre was not accessible when I checked, and its feature pages do not answer several questions that decide the Plus value. Put each of these to the trial itself, or to Tradify's support in writing.

• Which fields SmartRead fills: the page says it extracts "the details" of an invoice but lists no fields. Check supplier, date, total and line items on your own bills, and whether it handles receipts as well as invoices.
• Matching bills to jobs: job costing and bill tracking are on Pro and Plus, but I could not confirm how SmartRead assigns a bill to a job. Test it with two live jobs.
• Per-user licensing: the plans are priced per user. Ask whether every user needs Plus for SmartTools to work, or only the person who uses them.
• Data handling: ask how supplier bills and quote text used by SmartTools are stored, and whether they are used to train anything, before you upload bills carrying account numbers.
• Reports: the pricing page lists Job Service Reports and Reporting under Plus only, described as customer reports based on job data. The invoicing page describes job cost reports comparing estimated and actual time and materials, and the pricing page does not say which plan carries those. Check which reports you would use before counting them in the uplift.

With those answers, the decision is a small piece of arithmetic. Stay on Pro if the trial shows under 20 minutes of net saving for two users, or if silent errors appear. Move to Plus if the SmartTools test clears the three conditions, or if the other Plus features score well enough on their own. Either way, the set-up above is the same: quote templates, a clean price list and a connected ledger carry more of the saving than any SmartTool does.

Tradify questions electricians ask before paying

Is Tradify's free trial really full-featured?

Tradify's pricing page says the 14-day free trial includes all the features, and its other pages say no credit card is needed. That means SmartTools can be tested without paying for Plus. Start the trial only when you have real supplier bills and live quotes to run through it, because a quiet fortnight proves nothing about the Plus plan.

Do I need Plus if I work alone?

Probably not at first. Pro at $51 adds quote and invoice templates, quote options with online acceptance, progress invoicing, reminders, job costing and timesheets, which cover most of a sole trader's chasing. Plus adds $10 a month for SmartTools and extras such as purchase orders, kit bundles and reports, so move up only if your trial shows more than about 20 minutes saved a month at your own hourly value.

Does Tradify work with my accounting software?

Its pricing page lists Xero and QuickBooks Online sync on every plan, and its invoicing page says the same two are supported. It does not mention MYOB or other packages, so if you use something else, ask Tradify in writing before you start. Connect your accounting early, because quote status and invoice numbers sync across.

Are Tradify's prices the same everywhere?

No. Tradify runs regional pricing pages with their own currency and amounts, and the figures here are the USD list prices from its main pricing page, per user per month. Open the page for your own region before comparing plans. Its electrical page describes month-to-month billing with no contract, so a trial-then-decide approach carries little lock-in.

Further reads

• Tradify for Builders: Set Up Quotes, Variations and Stage Payments — The same set-up for variations and stage payments.
• AI Software for Electricians: Monthly Cost in the UK and the US — What a full electrician software stack costs a month.
• Seven Best AI Tools for Electricians, From Calls to Certificates — Seven AI tools for electricians, from calls to certificates.
• Best AI Receipt Scanning App for UK Tradesmen: Xero, Tradify, Powered Now — Receipt scanning apps compared for tradesmen.
• AI App for Tradies: ServiceM8, Tradify or Fergus by Business Size — Picking a job app by business size.
• AI Electrical Quoting Software: Build Three-Option Upgrade Packages — How to build three comparable packages for a panel or consumer unit upgrade: what quoting software and AI draft for you, and the checks before a quote is sent.
• AI Quote Generators for UK Tradesmen: Built-In or ChatGPT? — What the AI in four job-software tools really does with a quote, what a general assistant adds, and a scored three-job test to settle it.
• Electrical Contractor AI: Setting Up Permit and Inspection Tracking — A spreadsheet tracker for permits, notifications and inspection dates, plus AI prompts that draft the chasers and flag jobs before they stall.
• AI Receptionist for Electricians: Call-Outs vs Quote Requests — Three lanes for electrical calls (emergency, fault, quote), the safety questions and never-say list, a fallback chain for emergencies and two worked call flows.
• How to Price Electrical Jobs: Build a Guide From Your Past Jobs With AI — A seven-task price guide built from nine months of invoices, with a minimum charge, a three-job test and a quarterly refresh routine.
• EICR Software and AI: What Can Be Drafted, What You Decide — AI can tidy the wording of EICR observations. The coding, the overall verdict and the signature stay with the electrician.
• How Can AI Help Electricians? Seven Office Jobs to Hand Over — Seven office jobs an electrician can hand to AI, each with a named tool, a sample output and a clear line on what you still approve yourself.
• AI Tools and AI Development: The Complete 2026 Guide — the AI hub, including every tutorial in the AI-for-business series.

Sources: Tradify pricing, SmartTools, quoting, invoicing and electrical pages (USD list prices), read in November 2026; Tradify's help centre was not accessible for checking.