You can quote permanent lighting on site in 20 minutes with one photo, a tape and a rate card, and leave with a signed agreement and a deposit. That is how we sell permanent lighting jobs in Ottawa.: 2 minutes for the photo, 2 for the reference length, 6 to draw, 5 to price and walk the homeowner through it, 3 to sign, 2 for the deposit. Each step is below in job order, with a two-storey worked to $5,687.
The 20-minute clock#
| Minute |
Step |
You do |
GlowBid does |
| 0 to 2 |
Photo |
Stand across the street, shoot the front square-on in daylight |
Opens the photo on the canvas |
| 2 to 4 |
Reference |
Tap both ends of the garage door, type 16 ft |
Sets the scale for everything in that plane |
| 4 to 10 |
Draw |
Trace roofline, ridge line, peaks and jumps; mark storeys |
Footage by run, foreshortening warnings, bill of materials |
| 10 to 15 |
Price |
Pick the product line, add the controller, show the customer |
Prices every run from your rate card with premiums, minimum, deposit and tax |
| 15 to 18 |
Sign |
Hand them their own phone |
E-signature with a SHA-256 fingerprint on the signed PDF |
| 18 to 20 |
Deposit |
Card on the same screen |
Stripe deposit, job on the calendar, invoice with a payments ledger |
What do you need before you knock?#
Set up once, in the office, not in the driveway. Your rate card with per-foot prices by run type on each product line you carry (track, no-track, or your own names), the peak and storey premiums, the per-jump and per-peak amounts, the controller and transformer add-ons, the minimum job, the deposit percent and the tax line. Your agreement clauses read once; GlowBid ships sample wording with a plain notice that it is not legal advice, and you edit it to yours. Stripe connected so the deposit lands in your account. Then in the truck: a tape, a laser if you have one, and a charged iPad or phone.
On the drive over, the address search shows a live Street View preview so you recognise the house and can guess at storeys and gables before you park. It is a preview only. Nothing from it is saved or measured.
Minute 0 to 2: take the photo#
The quote is only as good as this photo, so take it properly. Cross the street, centre yourself on the house, hold the phone level and get the whole roofline in frame with the garage door or the front door visible. Daylight, no low sun behind the house. If the front has a bump-out or a porch that hides an eave, take a second photo from the angle that shows it, but keep one master photo for the scale.
Two rules. The photo is yours or the homeowner's; never a Google image. And shoot square-on, because a photo taken from the driveway corner makes the far eave read short and you will underquote it. The roofline measuring guide has the photo rules with examples.
Minute 2 to 4: set the reference length#
Tap both ends of something with a known length in the same plane as the front roofline. A double garage door is 16 ft, a single is 8 ft, a front door is 36 in. If the house has none of those on the front, tape a window while you are standing there and type the number. A longer reference gives a truer scale, so the garage door wins when it is there.
That scale is true for the front face of the house. Side eaves, returns and anything angled away from the camera read short, sometimes by a third. GlowBid tags those runs with a foreshortening warning and lets you type the tape length; the quote then shows which feet were photo-scaled and which were manual.
Minute 4 to 10: draw the runs#
Trace each run as its own type, because each type prices differently: roofline along the gutter line including the returns, ridge line along the top of a gable if they want it lit, peaks down the two sloped edges of each gable, and jumps for the unlit cord between lit runs. Mark the upper runs as storey 2 as you go. A two-gable front is typically four peak runs and two or three jumps.
Draw the jumps. They are cable and labour, not nodes, and a quote that ignores them eats the hours while a quote that counts them as lit footage orders channel that goes nowhere. On our default track line a jump is $12 per unlit foot plus whatever flat amount you set per jump.
Every run you draw carries a source tag, reference-scaled or manual, and a confidence level, and both print on the quote. The price comes from the lines you drew, and the footage, the materials list and the price all come from those same lines, so changing a corner changes all three.
Minute 10 to 15: price it and walk them through it#
The price is already there when the last run closes. Pick the product line (track or no-track), add the controller, and a transformer if the run count needs one, and turn the screen toward the homeowner. Show them the runs in colour on their own house, then the lines: roofline feet at your rate, peaks with the pitch premium, the second-storey premium on the upper runs, the jumps, the controller, the deposit. Five minutes is enough if the rate card was set up properly and you are not doing arithmetic.
Answer the price question with numbers they can check. Trimlight's own pricing page says $18 to $35 per foot; HomeGuide says $20 to $40 installed. On our worked house the all-in comes to $33.45 per lit foot, which is inside both. If the customer flinches, quote the no-track line on the same drawing; it is one tap and on our example it takes $979 off. If they ask about leasing seasonal lights instead, GlowBid has that agreement type too, and the permanent per-foot pricing guide shows the three-way comparison we use at the table.
Then say the sentence that is printed on every quote anyway: the footage is measured from a photo, it is an estimate, and we confirm it on site before the crew arrives.
Minute 15 to 18: sign#
Hand the homeowner their own phone, not yours. They read the scope block (product line, colour capability, node spacing, what is included, warranty, quote expiry), the clauses, and the total, and they sign with a finger. The signed PDF carries their name, the date and a SHA-256 fingerprint of the document, so what they signed is what you keep. The agreement type for a permanent job is the one-time install; if the same customer is also taking seasonal lights on the back deck, that is a second agreement on the same customer record.
Do not skip the clauses to save a minute. The default clause on measurement (a photo estimate confirmed on site, and a check with the customer if the on-site number moves the price more than 5 percent) is what makes the site visit painless instead of a fight.
Minute 18 to 20: take the deposit#
Card on the same screen, before the "let me think about it." GlowBid's default is 30 percent of the total, collected through Stripe when they sign, and you can set it anywhere on the rate card. The moment the payment clears the job is booked, the deposit shows on the invoice's payments ledger, and the balance is due on install day. Channel gets cut to the house, so a signed quote with no money down is a maybe, and a permanent crew cannot plan around maybes.
Worked example: a two-storey front, 19 minutes at the door#
Two-storey with a single-storey garage bump-out and two front gables, the same house as our permanent per-foot pricing guide. One photo from across the street, the 16 ft garage door as the reference, track line. Every rate is a GlowBid default except three example settings of our own: $25 per jump, $40 per peak and a $95 transformer add-on (the defaults are $0 per jump, $0 per peak and no transformer line; you set your own).
| Minute |
What happened |
Result |
| 0 to 2 |
Photo from across the street, garage door in frame |
Canvas open |
| 2 to 3 |
Reference: garage door, 16 ft |
Scale set |
| 3 to 9 |
Roofline 48 ft (garage and porch) and 74 ft (upper), four peaks of 12 ft, three jumps totalling 16 ft, upper runs marked storey 2 |
170 lit ft, 16 ft of jump, materials list with the 10 percent buffer |
| 9 to 14 |
Track line, one controller, one transformer; walked through the lines |
$5,687.00 before tax, $33.45 per lit foot |
| 14 to 17 |
Homeowner read the scope block and signed on their own phone |
Signed PDF with fingerprint |
| 17 to 19 |
Deposit by card, 30 percent |
$1,706.10 collected, install date booked |
The line items were $1,200 for the garage and porch roofline, $2,035 for the upper roofline with the storey premium, $1,680 for the four peaks with pitch and storey premiums, $192 for the jumps, $235 in flat jump and peak amounts, $250 for the controller and $95 for the transformer. Premiums add to the base rate rather than compounding, so the peaks are $28 plus 15 percent plus 10 percent, $35 per foot. You can draw this house in the free tool and see the footage come out the same way.
What goes wrong at the door#
- Quoting from a photo shot at an angle. The far eave reads short, the quote is light, and you find out on install day. Cross the street.
- Forgetting the returns. The 3 ft pieces around each corner add 10 to 20 ft on a two-storey, and channel is not free.
- Leaving out the transformer. A long house with two zones needs a second power drop; add it as its own line rather than eating it.
- Not asking where the controller goes. Find the outlet and the Wi-Fi reach before you price, not after the channel is up.
- Promising a date before the deposit. The calendar moves when the money lands, not when they nod.
- Quoting the front only and letting them assume the whole house. The scope block says front elevation; read it out loud.
- Doing arithmetic on a notepad. If you are multiplying at the door, the rate card was not set up. Fix it in the office and the quote takes five minutes.
After you leave#
Two things happen next. Before install day someone tapes the runs the photo flagged, confirms the footage on site, and if the price moves more than the clause allows, calls the customer before ordering channel. And if they did not sign at the door, the quote goes out from the truck with the drawing on it, and the follow-up starts: a text the next day, another in a week, and on Pro that sequence runs on its own and tells you when they open the PDF. Founding pricing for installers is on the pricing page.
