When a Pembrokeshire builder's supplier prices move

The quote goes out on a Tuesday evening, after a day on the tools. Timber, blocks, insulation and fixings, all priced off a supplier list that was already a few weeks old. The customer in Narberth says they will think about it.

Two weeks later they say yes. By then the merchant in Haverfordwest has moved two of the lines, and the yard in Milford Haven has moved another. The evening you spent pricing the job has to be spent again, or the margin quietly walks away.

That is the loop this post is about: repricing quotes when supplier prices move. It turns up from Pembroke Dock to Fishguard, and it rarely gets quoted for, because it looks like part of the job. The customer in Fishguard does not want to hear about the merchant's list. They agreed a number, and they remember it.

The maths (a sketch, not a client figure)

Take one book of open quotes. Repricing and re-sending when supplier lists move, plus the notes and the calls that go with it.

Assumption: your time is worth £30 an hour, and repricing takes about an hour a week across the quotes you have out. That is a sketch, not a measured figure.

• × 1 hour a week = the repricing time
• × £30 an hour = £30 a week
• × 46 working weeks = £1,380 a year

Now the same book of quotes with a priced list behind it. Each line carries a last-checked date. When a merchant moves a price, the reprice becomes a short review of one or two lines instead of a fresh evening. If you want to see your own week before anything else, the free time leak tracker at tishka.ai/tracker logs it.

Score it: the three checks

• Hours. An hour a week or more spent re-checking lines and re-sending quotes. For most trades that clears the bar without any argument.
• Repeat. The pattern is simple: check the priced list against the dates, then redraft the quote. If it fits on one written page, a new starter can run it.
• Risk-if-wrong. A quote sent with an old figure loses money or starts an argument. A price held too long loses the margin. Because the number is the business, a person checks every one before it leaves.

Try one thing this week (free)

Pull the last three quotes you sent. Next to each one, mark the supplier lines that have moved since. By Friday you will know how often your quotes go stale and which lines move most. That is the shape of the problem, in your own figures.

Where a person stays

Software can hold the priced list, watch the dates and prepare a new quote when a line moves. It can show which lines changed and by how much. It cannot decide what to do about it. The final number and the decision to hold a price or talk to the customer stay with a named person. A draft stays a draft until someone reads it and approves it. Financial work never sends on its own.

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