Business Email for an Electrical Contractor: Estimates, Compliance and Bids

Electrical work produces paperwork that other trades do not: test certificates, inspection reports, compliance declarations and bid submissions to builders and councils. Each of those is sent by email and kept for years, and a builder's procurement team will not award a subcontract to an address that ends in gmail.com. The address map below is built around that paperwork.

Quick answer

Set up service@, estimates@, invoices@ and office@ on your own domain, with a name@ mailbox for the owner and the office manager. Certificates and compliance documents go out from office@ so they are easy to find later. Bids go out from the owner's name@ with office@ in copy. All of it is free on OquMail.

The addresses to create

• service@yourcompany.com for call-outs and repairs. A group read by the office and the owner.
• estimates@yourcompany.com for domestic quotes and the website form. A group with the estimator and the owner; this is where the rewires and the EV-charger jobs arrive.
• invoices@yourcompany.com for sending invoices and receiving payment questions. A mailbox read by the bookkeeper.
• office@yourcompany.com for certificates, inspection bookings, insurance, suppliers and anything that must be found again in three years. A mailbox, not a group, so there is one archive.
• name@yourcompany.com for the owner and office staff. Apprentices and electricians on site rarely need one.

Certificates and compliance

Every installation certificate, periodic inspection report and minor-works certificate should leave from office@ with the job address and certificate number in the subject line, for example "EICR – 14 Elm Road – cert 2041". Three years later, when the house is sold and the solicitor asks for a copy, a search on the address finds it in seconds. Keep the PDF attached rather than linked; links to portals expire, attachments in a mailbox do not. The free plan gives each mailbox 5 GB, which is many thousands of certificates.

Commercial bids

Builders, facilities companies and councils vet subcontractors. The email that carries your bid is part of that vetting. Send it from the owner's name@yourcompany.com, copy office@ so it is archived, use a subject line that names the project and the tender reference, and attach insurance, accreditation and the bid as separate clearly named PDFs. A signature with the company registration number and the accreditation scheme membership saves the procurement officer a question. Our quote and proposal templates cover the follow-up.

Set it up in an afternoon

1. Add your domain in OquMail and paste the MX, SPF and DKIM records at your registrar. The DNS checklist has the exact values.
2. Create office@ and the owner's name@ first, then a name@ mailbox for each person who replies to customers.
3. Create the shared addresses as groups and add the right people as members. Each member gets a copy in their own mailbox, so nothing depends on one person checking one inbox.
4. Set a signature on every mailbox in webmail with the phone number, the address and the licence or registration number where your trade requires it.
5. Put the new addresses in the Google Business Profile, on the website, on invoices and on the vehicles, in that order; the profile is where most local leads start.
6. Turn on two-factor authentication for the owner account. Invoice fraud starts with a stolen inbox.

Mistakes specific to the trade

• Sending certificates from a personal phone address. The homeowner loses them, you cannot find them, and the scheme auditor asks why.
• Bidding from estimates@. Procurement teams reply to the address they received the bid from; make sure that address is a person who will see the reply.
• Keeping photos of boards and faults only on phones. Email them to office@ with the job address in the subject line; it is the simplest site record there is.
• Giving every apprentice a mailbox and then never removing it when they leave. Create mailboxes for people who email customers, and remove them on the day someone goes.
• No written approval for variations. "Reply YES to approve the extra circuit at £X" from service@ settles the argument before the invoice.

Common questions

Should certificates come from the software that generates them?

Most certificate apps can email a PDF, but they send it from their own address and keep no copy you control. Download the PDF and send it from office@, or set the app to send through your office@ mailbox over SMTP if it supports that. Either way, the certificate ends up in a mailbox you own.

How do I handle a large attachment, like a full inspection report with photos?

Compress the photos first; a phone photo is often 5 MB and a report with forty of them will be refused by many receiving servers. If the file is still large, upload it to a shared drive and put the link in the email, with the certificate itself still attached as a small PDF.

One address or two for a husband-and-wife firm?

Two name@ mailboxes, and the shared addresses as groups with both of you as members. A shared login is one lost phone away from locking both of you out. The partners guide covers the details.