Nobody buys windows in one sitting
A window company’s office work is the long tail of every sale: measure sheets turned into orders, lead times chased with the factory, install dates moved when an order slips, and a follow-up to every homeowner who said she would think about it. Then there is the one who has not called yet. She has been meaning to do the windows since the February heating bill. Other companies have been in the house, she sat through a ninety-minute presentation, got a number she did not believe, and did nothing. Tonight she is on your website at nine o’clock trying to work out whether this is a $6,000 job or a $16,000 one, and every site she has opened says “call for a free consultation.”
The other call is not planned at all: a pane is broken, the weather is coming in, and she is ringing glass shops until a human answers. NapkinPrice™ runs both as separate services on one account — the replacement asks nine questions and puts a range on the screen, the repair carries your trip charge inside the number instead of springing it at the door, and a bay window or a new opening cut into a wall goes down a third path that never guesses a price.
The replacement flow also asks if she has a photo of the windows from outside; the lead shows it, and you ask for the pictures when you call back. Putting the photo itself on the lead is on the roadmap, so it has no tick there.
The eight things that set a window and door number
Seven of these are a count or a pick-one and the eighth is a ZIP code, which is what makes this trade quotable online: no area arithmetic, nothing to go outside with a tape measure for. You build them once in the dashboard, and every rate stays a field you can change.
Window count
The base number, and one of only two genuinely per-unit lines on the service: your per-window rate times the openings she is replacing. On the demo that rate is $630, meaning one standard-size double-hung installed. Ask for openings, not rooms — a double-hung, a casement and a picture window are one each.
Frame material
Vinyl, fiberglass or wood-clad, as a percentage on the whole estimate rather than a line item, because material changes the unit, the hardware and the hours together. It is also where the honest limit sits: the engine has no rule that multiplies one answer by another, so there is no price-per-window-type here. One rate, and a percentage that moves it.
Glass package
Clear double pane, low-E with argon, or triple, as another percentage on the whole estimate. Low-E and argon is what most people end up with and what they feel beside a south-facing window in August. Set the percent your supplier actually charges you: clear to triple is not a rounding error.
How high the openings are
Ground floor, second storey as well, or third storey and anything over a roof or porch. Access is labour, not material: a unit goes up a ladder in two pairs of hands, and staging goes up before a sash comes out. Ask for the highest opening — most revised estimates turn on that answer.
Full-frame or insert
Out to the studs, or a pocket insert into the sound old frame. Full-frame is the right answer when the sills are soft or the frames are out of square, and it is mostly labour, so it belongs on a percentage rather than a fee. Say in the help text that an insert keeps her trim and costs less.
Capping and interior trim
Bent aluminum outside so the trim never needs painting, and new casing and sill inside. Both are flat amounts, and here is the part nobody should paper over: a flat amount is added ONCE PER JOB, not once per opening, because no rule in the engine multiplies one answer by another. So the figure is a typical house’s worth of trim, four capped openings and fourteen carry the same line online, and the help text says so in her words: we true it up when we measure.
Entry and patio doors
A door is not a window and should not be priced as one, so it gets its own count and its own rate — $2,475 a door installed on the demo. Because it is a count with a multiply behind it, two doors really is twice the doors. The percentages above lift the door line with everything else.
Travel zone
Put your ZIPs in zones, whole ZIPs or their first three digits, each with a flat charge, a percentage or both, and the ZIP she types is priced by its most specific zone. A ZIP marked as outside your area gets a polite note that it cannot be priced online, and you keep the lead. A job minimum sits underneath for the small jobs.
Ten windows and a patio door, start to finish
Nine questions, about a minute, and the last is a photo prompt that moves no money. They are asked in this order on our window and door demo account, and the total underneath is the live engine’s own answer, not a number put on this page by hand.
| # | What she is asked | What she picks | What it does to the price |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | How many windows are we replacing? | Ten | 10 × the per-window rate — $630 each on the demo, so $6,300 |
| 2 | What frames do you want? | Vinyl | The per-window rate is built on vinyl: +0% |
| 3 | Which glass package? | Double pane, low-E and argon | A percent on the whole job: +8% |
| 4 | Where are the windows? | Second story as well | Another percent on the whole job: +9% |
| 5 | Take the old frames out to the studs? | No | Nothing — an insert, so no full-frame percent |
| 6 | Cap the outside trim in aluminum? | Yes | A flat $625 for the job, not per opening |
| 7 | How many entry or patio doors? | One | 1 × the per-door rate — $2,475 on the demo |
| 8 | New interior trim to match? | No | Nothing — the rule only fires on yes |
| 9 | Got a photo of the windows from outside? | Offered | Nothing. A photo never moves the price |
| The arithmetic, in the order the engine runs it | $6,300 + $625 + $2,475 = $9,400, then the two percentage answers pool and apply once to all of it — the door and the capping included: +17% → $10,998.00 | ||
| She sees | $10,008 – $11,988 | ||
| What lands in your inbox, the second she submits | Name, mobile, ZIP, all nine answers, and the photo flag | ||
Those rates and percentages are the demo account’s, not a Tailgate Office price list; every one is a setting in your dashboard, and a new per-window rate never means editing your website. The total is the engine’s real answer: $10,008 to $11,988 for those nine answers, which the demo will give you in a minute. Note what the percentages do: they move the whole estimate at once, not one window, because nothing in the engine multiplies one answer by another.
See it quote before you decide? Our example window and door company’s website carries NapkinPrice, the same engine pricing live. Give it those nine answers and the same range comes back.
Try the live demo site (opens in a new tab)Replacements and repairs get a price. A bay window gets a visit.
A whole-house replacement, a broken pane and a bay window are three different conversations. Running them through one form is how you end up quoting a glass wall like a bedroom sash.
Replacement — quotes instantly
No trip charge here: the measure is free and it sells the job. Instead it carries a job minimum, so a single ground-floor window never comes back under it — $950 on the demo, and the low end of that band is the floor itself rather than 9% below it. Past $26,000 it stops pricing and gives you the lead, instead of publishing a figure that size from nine answers. Eighteen wood-clad triple-pane windows on a third storey, full-frame, with capping, two doors and new trim comes out at $33,823.90 on the demo — exactly the job it refuses to quote.
Glass, screen and hardware repair — quotes instantly
The trip charge lives in the service base fee, so it is added once however many openings you look at and cannot be dodged by answering the smallest option to everything. That is $79 on the demo, already in the range and never a surprise at the door. A cracked pane in a standard ground-floor opening quotes $346 to $422 for the next slot; the same pane upstairs and needed tonight quotes $501 to $612, because urgency and ladder work are both percentages. One question raises the floor instead of adding dollars: soft or out-of-square wood means carpentry before glazing, so it lifts the job minimum to $650.
Bays, glass walls and new openings — site visit, never priced
Site-visit mode captures the whole spec and shows no number at all, which is the right answer for a bow window, a wall of folding glass doors, a basement egress, or an opening cut into a wall that is holding something up. It still asks what she is looking at, how many openings, what the wall is made of, and whether a historic or HOA review applies — that last one moves no money, it tells you whether a review sits in front of the schedule. She is told plainly that a job like this is seen first, and your lead holds the wall, the openings and any review that applies.
No priced service goes live without a real base fee or a real minimum, on purpose: with neither, a homeowner who answered zero windows and zero doors would see $0, and one bad number on your website costs more than a day of setup. It is also why the replacement service carries a $950 floor rather than nothing at all.
The broken-pane call is the one you cannot afford to miss
A window open to the weather is the closest thing this trade has to a burst pipe. It is dark, it is raining, and she is dialling down the search results until a human picks up. Only 52% of callers to home-service businesses speak with a person (Invoca, 2026 (opens in a new tab)), and fewer than 3% of callers sent to voicemail leave a message (Invoca, 2024 (opens in a new tab)). The repair is worth a few hundred dollars — but she is standing in a house with ten original windows in it, and you are the company that showed up.
| What a missed window call is worth | On the demo account |
|---|---|
| Ten windows and a patio door, low-E glass, two storeys | $10,008 – $11,988 |
| A cracked pane, ground floor, next available slot | $346 – $422 |
| The same pane, upstairs, needed tonight | $501 – $612 |
| Callers sent to voicemail who leave a message | Under 3% (Invoca, 2024 (opens in a new tab)) |
| One recovered replacement pays for | 50 months of the bundle |
| One recovered pane pays for | 1 month, and it is how you get invited back for the ten |
Once texting is switched on, CallMitt™ answers her missed call by text, the first text she gets from you names your company, and whatever she sends back sits on the thread with her window quote. The message is picked by the hour and the day — the demo shop runs 8am to 5pm, because you cannot take a window out of a wall at seven in the morning — so a 7pm call gets the after-hours version rather than one saying you are out on an install. Every version asks the question that sorts your evening: is the opening open to the weather?
Here is the plain state of it. The piece that catches a forwarded call is built and needs only your texting number, so for now you log the missed call and nothing goes out; anything queued in the meantime is retired, never delivered, when your carrier registration clears. Everything around it already runs: five messages, the hours for each day, the weekend, holiday and vacation rules, the quiet hours, the opt-outs, and the thread where her reply will sit beside her quote.
How CallMitt Works Run Your Own NumbersAn installer is hired or lost on two questions
A sealed glass unit is sixty to a hundred and twenty pounds of something that cuts, carried up a ladder by two people who have to agree on when to let go. And the trade turns on one skill: a unit shimmed plumb and square locks with one finger, and a unit that is not will be a callback for as long as the house stands. So the questions that matter are whether he is willing to do that work, and whether he has ever made a window lock without forcing it.
Put “Now hiring — text CREW to your texting number” on the van and the showroom glass. CrewFunnel™ asks seven short questions: is he 18 or older, is he up for carrying glass off ladders and staging, has he shimmed a window plumb and square, how many years installing windows or doors, how far out does he live, can he start inside two weeks, and what was the last job he worked on. Three answers stop the screening (under 18, unwilling to do the ladder work, or living past your distance), and the other four are weighted into a fit score.
Copy two settings from the demo job. Distance is a knockout and carries no weight, because number answers score higher the bigger they are, so weighted miles would rank the installer furthest away first. The last-job question carries no weight either: any answer earns full marks, so a weighted box only lifts whoever typed something. All seven questions have a Spanish translation as well.
Until your texting number is live, he takes those seven questions on your screening page rather than by text, with nothing else changed; the keyword on the van comes into play once your carrier registration clears.
See how CrewFunnel works
New windows earn their review the first night the draft is gone
She signs off with the capping on, the old units in the trailer and the house still smelling of caulk. That night the wind picks up, she walks past the living-room window in her socks, and the draft she has lived with for years is simply not there. That night she would gladly write you a review. The heating bill that shows the difference will not land for a month or more, and by then you are one more van she cannot quite put a name to. The outfit with sixty reviews is not sixty times better than you; somebody there asks every customer, while the house still smells of caulk.
HurraBell™ does the asking. Once review requests are switched on, you mark the job done — from the inbox, from your phone, or from your job software through Zapier — and the customer gets one request in your words, with your own Google review link, after a delay you pick: an hour, unless you change it. Three days later, one email reminder, unless the link has been opened or the customer has since texted you, messaged you from your website or had a call logged on her thread.
Review requests aren’t switched on for new accounts yet. When they are, the request goes by email once your Google review link is saved on the HurraBell page and your mailing address on the Account page. A text goes as well where the customer ticked the box on your quote form or visit booking agreeing to a review-request text, and only once your carrier registration clears, the same wait as every text on this site; until then it is email only.
See how HurraBell worksOne recovered window job covers 50 months
That is the low end of one ten-window quote against the whole front office. Even the pane you fixed on a wet Tuesday evening covers 1 of them, and it is why she calls you about the rest of the house.
The Tailgate Office Bundle
Instant quotes on your website, missed-call text-back and text-to-apply hiring (texts go out once texting is switched on), and, once switched on, a review request after every job, plus customers, jobs, estimates and invoices in one place. 30 days free, no credit card, no setup fee, cancel from the dashboard.
Start Free TrialOnly need one of the tools? After the trial you can keep just that one at its own price; the office stays with the Bundle.
Window and door questions we get asked
As a range, yes, and only ever as a range. The widget shows a bracket and the disclaimer under it says the final number comes after you measure every opening, because a window is ordered to the opening it goes in. Write that line in your own words: removal, disposal, sealing the perimeter and the interior caulk line are in every window you quote; rot behind an old frame is quoted separately before you start; nothing is ordered until she has the written number.
Because the engine has no rule that multiplies one answer by another, and we would rather tell you here than let you find out on a Tuesday. Count × price-for-that-type is exactly that forbidden multiply. So the demo carries one per-window rate — a standard double-hung installed — and moves it with percentages for frame, glass, access and full-frame work. If you want per-type rates, run a service per type: she picks the type first, and each service has its own per-unit rate. Both work today, and neither lies to her.
It is a simplification, and the help text says so in her own words rather than hiding it: the capping figure is a typical house’s worth of trim, and we true it up when we measure. The reason is in the engine — a flat amount on a yes/no or a pick-one is added once per job, because no rule multiplies one answer by another. Only a count with a multiply behind it is genuinely per unit, which is why the windows and the doors are counts and the capping is not. If four capped openings against fourteen matters to your margin, split it into two services.
Yes, and it is worth knowing why. Windows and doors are separate number questions with their own rates, and both allow zero, so she can ask for one patio slider and nothing else. No rule fires on a number answered zero, so the windows contribute nothing — on the demo one patio door on its own quotes $2,252 to $2,698, and one ground-floor window comes back at $950 to $1,036 because the service minimum catches it.
The bays and new-openings service already does: it asks whether a historic or HOA review applies, and the answer moves no money; it only tells you whether a review sits in front of the schedule. On the replacement service you can add the same as a yes or no with no price behind it, so the lead tells you before you measure.
Your disclaimer can, in your own words, and she reads it under the number before she submits. The demo repair service’s says insulated glass is made to the opening and usually takes a week to come in, and that an unsafe opening is boarded or taped the same day; the demo replacement’s says a window is ordered to the opening it goes in, and nothing is ordered until she has the written number. Put your real lead time there and it is settled before she rings you.
She is comparing you whatever you do. What changes is whether she compares with your bracket in front of her, or with nothing but the other company’s ninety-minute presentation. A homeowner who sees a real range at 9pm, with an honest note about what the measure confirms, stops calling down the list — and the person who wanted ten windows for $4,000 never fills in your callback form at all.
Yes, by design. The shop line stays where it is and rings the way it does now; nothing is ported. Forwarding a call to a mobile, a ring group or a second phone does not get in the way, because the text only fires when nobody picks up. A call nobody answers in about twenty seconds is passed on to your own texting number, a local number in your area code registered to your business: on a mobile you switch that forwarding on with a code from the setup guide, and on a desk line or an office phone system it is a setting you ask your phone company for. A short greeting in place of your voicemail tells the caller a text is coming, and the first text she gets from you names the company. An answering service can keep its hours, since the forwarding is your own setting and switches off again. Until your texting number is live, you log the missed call; CallMitt picks the message for the hour and the day, checks your quiet hours, opt-outs and suppression list, and holds the reply in your outbox to read.
About fifteen minutes for your five text-back messages and the hours you keep each day, a minute, once review requests are switched on for your account, to paste your Google review link on the HurraBell page and your mailing address on the Account page, and about an hour for the nine questions with your per-window rate, per-door rate, material and glass percentages and your capping and trim fees. A priced service will not go live until it carries a real base fee or a real minimum, which is deliberate. There is no onboarding call, no setup fee and no contract, and $199 a month pays for all four tools.
Also hang garage doors, or side houses? The rest of the trade pages are here, and you can ask us anything they leave out.
Answer the 7pm call. Quote the ten windows.
Set it up tonight. Free for 30 days, no card, no setup fee, cancel from the dashboard.