Not comfortable writing in French? How to produce flawless quotes as a tradesperson

What the law requires, and what it doesn't

French law requires French to be used when describing a service and its guarantee terms, and on invoices. A quote (devis) given to a client in France must therefore be written in French and include its mandatory information (mentions obligatoires).

However, nothing requires you to write it yourself, or to think in French while putting it together. What matters is the final document.

Why the written quote matters so much

• It comes before the work. Clients judge your business on the quote before they have seen a single job. Spelling mistakes or vague descriptions make them doubt, wrongly, how seriously you work.
• It is binding. A badly described item is an item open to dispute. "Refaire sol" (redo floor) says nothing about the area, the preparation or the material.
• Other people read it. Insurers, the building's managing agent (syndic), the client's bank: they compare documents, not skills.

The usual solutions, and their limits

• Asking someone close to you. Your partner, a child, a friend. It works, but the quote only goes out when they are free, and they don't always know the trade vocabulary.
• Paying a secretarial service or an accountant. Reliable, but expensive and slow for a quote of just a few lines.
• Copying old quotes. Quick, until the day a job is unlike any other, and with the risk of copying out wording that is no longer up to date.
• A machine translator. It translates words, not a trade: "chape" (screed), "ragréage" (levelling compound) or "plinthes" (skirting boards) rarely come out intact.

Dictate in your own language, get a quote in French

That is how MonDevisIA works. You describe the work out loud, in the language you think fastest in. The app recognises the language by itself, so there is nothing to set before you speak, and it writes the quote in French, using proper building-trade descriptions.

Fourteen spoken languages are supported: French, Arabic, Moroccan, Tunisian and Algerian Arabic, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Turkish, Polish, Romanian, Moldovan, Russian and English. The app's screens are translated into the same languages, with right-to-left display for Arabic.

An example

A plumber dictates in Moroccan Arabic that he is replacing the old water heater with a new one and adding a thermostatic mixer tap in the bathroom. The quote shows three lines in French: removal of the existing water heater; supply and installation of a new water heater with its connections; supply and installation of a thermostatic mixer tap.

Check it in your own language

Before sending, you can read the quote back in your own language to check that nothing has been misunderstood. The document the client receives stays in French.

Mandatory wording isn't translated, it's applied

Ten-year liability insurance (assurance décennale), statutory guarantees, consumer mediator, right of withdrawal: this wording is the same whoever the tradesperson is, and it is added automatically according to your situation. You don't need to know the exact French phrasing. To find out what it covers, see the list of mandatory information.

Three tips that work in any language

1. Give quantities: square metres, linear metres, number of items.
2. Describe the work room by room, in the order you will carry it out.
3. Go over the figures with the client before they sign: checking an area takes ten seconds on site, and ten days by post.

How dictation works is explained in detail in our article on voice quotes.