How a roofer quotes most jobs without climbing a ladder
For roofing, the site visit is the expensive part — half a day gone to price one job. James Miller mostly skips it now.
Updated 6 July 2026
James Miller runs Miller Roofing. More than most trades, roofing punishes the price-it-first visit: getting up to look at a job — or setting up access — can burn half a day before a single quote is written, and plenty of those jobs never happen.
Let the customer capture the job
James shares a link, and the customer sends photos and a short video shot from the ground — the roofline, the problem area, the run of guttering — plus a description of what's going on. It arrives in his inbox as one tidy request instead of a scheduled trip.
For a slipped tile, a gutter clear, or a section of flashing, that's usually enough to quote confidently. The genuinely big or dangerous jobs still get a proper survey — but the routine ones stop eating his days.
Quote and send
From the request, James itemises the work, adds his terms, and sends a branded quote the customer can accept online — most of them without him ever leaving the yard.
For roofing, getting up to look at a job to quote it is half a day gone. Customers send me photos and a video from the ground now, and I quote most jobs without leaving the yard.
Common questions
- Can customers send video, not just photos?
- Yes. The intake accepts photos and video, so a customer can walk the camera around a problem and give you far more to price from than a phone call would.
- What about jobs that really need a survey?
- Use the photo intake to filter and price the routine work, and reserve site visits for the large or access-critical jobs where you'd want to be on the roof anyway.
- Do customers need an app to send a video?
- No — they open your link and upload from their phone. No app, no account.