Roofing
The roofing list arrives on your store's WhatsApp with material, thickness and length in the same text. Tablia reads it item by item, finds each piece in your catalogue and returns the quote for the salesperson to check.
The customer sends the same list to three stores and buys from whoever answers first. How many are left waiting because the salesperson is still typing the previous one?
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Good afternoon! I need to close the roof of the shed at the back.
Good afternoon! Send the list right here — text, a photo of the paper or a file.
48 fibre cement sheet corrugated 6mm 2.44 20 fibre cement sheet corrugated 6mm 1.83 14 standard ridge 6mm 6 translucent sheet corrugated 2.44 120 screw 8x110 with washer 30 m galvanised gutter 8 galvanised flashing 3m
Got it. That is 7 items — I am checking them against the store's stock now.
Quote #T7C3 is ready. 6 of the 7 items available; I marked the 3 m galvanised flashing as missing.
📄 quote-T7C3.pdf
Will the 48 be enough for the 90 m² of the shed?
That is where the overlap comes in — I will check the measurement with you before closing. Here is version 2 of #T7C3; the previous one is now superseded.
📄 quote-T7C3-v2.pdf
Illustrative conversation. Store, items and codes are examples.
Notice that two lines describe the same sheet and differ only in length — and that the difference between them is what decides whether the roof closes.
Store WhatsApp
Good afternoon! I need to close the shed roof, here is the list:
48 fibre cement sheet corrugated 6mm 2.44
20 fibre cement sheet corrugated 6mm 1.83
14 standard ridge 6mm
6 translucent sheet corrugated 2.44
120 screw 8x110 with washer
30 m galvanised gutter
8 galvanised flashing 3m
07:12
What Tablia read
6 of 7 items found. Whatever is missing goes to the salesperson with the customer's original wording — nothing disappears from the quote quietly.
Illustrative example. The list and the catalogue names are fictional.
In a roofing store what decides the match comes entirely after the number — and that is where exact-text search goes wrong.
Search by identical text finds “sheet” and delivers the 1.83 instead of the 2.44. The material separates fibre cement from clay, the profile separates corrugated from trapezoidal, the thickness separates the 5 mm from the 6 mm, and the length decides how many rows the roof has.
Effective is not total
A 2.44 sheet does not cover 2.44. The overlap eats part of every piece, and that is why a roof calculation never matches the tape measure.
Same size, different fit
Sheets from different manufacturers do not overlap the same way. Finishing a batch with whatever brand is left in stock becomes a leak months later.
They measure the roof, you count sheets
The list arrives in square metres and your sale is by the piece. Between the two sit the pitch, the overlap and the eaves — and none of them is written down.
The list is read line by line, and the number that is a quantity is kept apart from the numbers that measure the piece.
The fibre cement, the 6 mm and the 2.44 stay part of the piece's name. None of the three becomes a quantity, and none is lost along the way.
Sheets and ridges go by the piece, gutter usually by the metre. The unit comes from the item and from the context of the other lines, and appears on screen alongside it.
“fibre cement sheet corrugated 6mm 2.44” finds the FIBRE CEMENT SHEET CORRUGATED 6MM 2.44X1.10 in your catalogue. Alternative names for the same product are searched too.
Flashing your store does not carry goes to the salesperson with the customer's original wording, instead of vanishing from the list.
The list can arrive as
Handwriting is the only one that does not go in — returning a wrong length that looks right is worse than refusing the file.
What you upload
The stock file your store already uses, in CSV, XLS or XLSX. Tablia recognises the code, description and price columns with the help of artificial intelligence, and you check the mapping before it takes effect. A size with a comma, a point or in centimetres, and a manufacturer name in the middle of the description, do not block the search.
What it does with what it could not find
The piece appears to the salesperson with the customer's original wording, flagged as not found. It does not pick a similar length in its place and does not delete the line. The decision is your team's: add the item, offer an equivalent, adjust the quantity or say the store does not carry it.
Nothing is sent to the customer automatically. The salesperson reviews item by item, adjusts quantities, swaps products, sets the price and decides when to send.
Tablia is a copilot: it takes on the typing and the searching, and hands the decision back to whoever knows the customer and the job.
Tablia takes on
You decide
Yes. In “48 fibre cement sheet corrugated 6mm 2.44” it separates what is a quantity from what is specification: the 48 becomes the quantity, and the material, the profile, the thickness and the length stay part of the piece's name. The search then looks for that sheet in your catalogue by meaning, not by identical text.
There is no conversion rule inside it, and it is better to say so now. The square metres the customer wrote reach the salesperson as the customer wrote them. How many sheets cover that area depends on each piece's effective length, on the pitch and on the eaves — that sum stays with whoever sells.
It reads the length written on the line and keeps it attached to the piece, exactly as the customer sent it. What it does not do is deduct the overlap on its own: the difference between effective and total changes with the profile and with the manufacturer, so it stays a salesperson's check, at review.
The item arrives with what they wrote and with the candidates that make sense, and the choice between fibre cement, clay, metal or translucent stays with the salesperson. A diverging specification discards the candidate — so a sheet Tablia cannot confirm is not sent through as if it were the right one.
It can, and that is the normal case in a roofing store. Each item is extracted with its quantity and its unit — pieces for the sheet and the ridge, metres for the gutter, hundreds for the screws when that is how you sell them. One sheet of paper, four ways of measuring.
No. You upload the stock file the store already uses, in CSV, XLS or XLSX, and Tablia recognises the code, description and price columns with the help of artificial intelligence — you check the mapping before it takes effect. A size written with a comma, a point or in centimetres does not block the search.
PDF, a photo in JPG or PNG, a spreadsheet in XLSX or XLS, a document in DOCX, CSV or typed text. The only one that does not go in is a handwritten list: Tablia does not accept handwriting, so it never returns a wrong length that looks right.
Never. Nothing is sent without the salesperson. They review item by item, adjust quantities, swap products, set the price and decide when to send. Tablia takes on the typing and the searching; the decision stays with whoever knows the customer and the job.
Vamos conversar
In the demo we use a list your store received this week, against your own catalogue. It is the fastest way to find out whether Tablia can handle what you sell.
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