One of the most common reasons trade business owners put off switching to proper quoting software is the assumption that setup will be painful. New software, new system, a week of learning before you can send your first quote. CostForge was built to prove that assumption wrong. Here's exactly what the first ten minutes looks like.
Head to platform.costforge.co.uk/signup and create your account with an email address and password. No credit card required to get started.
Once you're in, fill in your business profile: name, address, contact details, VAT number if applicable, and upload your logo. This information auto-populates every quote you send from this point forward — you'll never type your own address into a quote again.
Navigate to Clients and add your first client. You'll need their name (or company name), address, and contact details. If you have a large existing client list you want to migrate, you can do that later — but for now, add one and move on.
CostForge links all quotes, jobs, and correspondence back to the client record, so this is the foundation everything builds on.
From your client record, create a new job — give it a name (e.g., "Kitchen Refit — March 2026") and a status. Then hit "New Quote" on the job.
Add your line items: type a description, enter the quantity and unit price, and CostForge handles the maths. You can add materials and labour as separate line items, group them into sections, and set margins at the quote level. When you're done, click "Generate PDF" — a professional, branded quote is ready to send.
Before you send, take two minutes to set your default payment terms, quote validity period, and any standard notes or terms and conditions you want to appear on every quote. Set these once in your settings and they'll populate automatically going forward.
If you want to add custom branding — your brand colour in the header, a different font — you can do that in the branding settings. Most users spend about 10 minutes here and never need to touch it again.
That's it. You're set up, your first quote is ready, and you've built the foundation for a clean, organised system that will save you hours every week. The hardest part of switching to CostForge is finding ten minutes to do it.
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