Most quotes lose money before they are sent, because the costs that were left out were never on the form. Here is the full list of what belongs in a quote, and how to lay it out so the client says yes.
A quote does two jobs at once, and most people only do the first.
It has to persuade — clear, itemised, professional enough that the client believes you have done this before.
And it has to be arithmetically survivable — it has to include every cost the work will actually generate, not just the obvious ones, so that winning it is good news rather than the start of a slow loss.
The second is where the money is, and it happens before you type anything. A beautiful quote built on incomplete costs is a well-presented mistake.
If your quote has two lines — labour and materials — you are missing most of what the job will cost you. Here is the fuller list, and almost every item is one that people leave out because it cannot be attributed to a single job neatly.
Labour at its real cost, not the wage. Once you add employer taxes, insurance, tools, protective equipment and the fact that a paid year contains far fewer productive hours than paid ones, an hour usually costs around double the wage on the payslip.
The people who never touch the work. Whoever answers the phone, chases the invoice, orders the materials, supervises the site. They are paid out of the hours the productive people sell.
Moving things. Loading, unloading, handling, and the second handling because the delivery came to the wrong entrance. Lifting equipment.
Transport. Vehicles, fuel, servicing, insurance. Travel time between sites, which you pay at full rate and bill at nothing.
Premises and storage. The yard, the unit, the space where materials sit between jobs.
Depreciation. Tools wear out and machines lose value. If your prices do not quietly replace your equipment, you are eating the business to fund the work.
Site visits and subsistence. The trip before the job, the meeting about a variation, accommodation and meals on work away from home, and the second trip because something was missed on the first.
Waste and breakage on materials — ten to fifteen per cent on most trades, more on some.
Money arriving late. You pay wages weekly and get paid in sixty days. Financing that gap is a real cost even when no bank is involved.
Then profit on top of all of it. Profit is a line you decide, not what happens to be left.
With the costs right, presentation is what remains — and it matters more than people who dislike selling want to admit.
Itemise, but not to death. Enough lines that the client can see what they are buying and compare like with like. Not so many that the quote becomes a negotiation over each one. Grouping by stage — preparation, installation, finishing — usually beats grouping by material.
Write the scope in their words. What they asked for, in language they used. A client who cannot recognise their own job in your quote assumes you misunderstood.
State what is excluded. This is the single most valuable paragraph in any quote and the one most often missing. Everything not listed — making good, disposal, out-of-hours work, anything discovered behind a wall — should be named as excluded, with a note that it can be priced separately.
Put the validity period on it. Material prices move. A quote with no expiry is a promise you have made forever.
Say how variations work, before there are any. Extra work is priced and agreed in writing before it starts. Write it in the quote and the awkward conversation has already happened, in advance, on paper.
And offer options where you honestly can. Two or three levels — the minimum that solves the problem, the sensible version, the complete one — moves the client from deciding whether to buy to deciding which to buy. It is not a trick; it is a genuinely more useful document.
A job estimated at 100 hours.
Quoted on wage plus materials plus a comfortable-looking markup, the labour line is built on a cost that is roughly half of the truth. The quote goes out, wins, and the job finishes having paid for itself and nothing else. Nobody notices, because the money did arrive — it just did not stay.
Quoted with real labour cost, overheads carried, waste allowed for and profit added deliberately, the number is substantially higher. Sometimes it loses. When it wins, it wins a job worth having.
The uncomfortable arithmetic is that the second quote is not a little higher than the first. It is often close to double, which is why most people try this once and go back to guessing.
What if my honest price loses the job?
Sometimes it will, and that is information. Either the competitor has lower costs — worth learning how — or they are pricing against their payslip figure and have not found out yet, or they intend to recover the difference through variations later. None of the three is a reason to sell below what work costs you.
Should I show my hourly rate?
Usually not. It invites a conversation about your rate rather than about the work. Price the job, cost the hour privately.
How long should a quote be?
One page for small work, two or three for anything substantial, plus the exclusions. Longer than that and it stops being read.
Should I follow up?
Yes, once, a few days after sending, asking whether anything needs clarifying. Not to apply pressure — to catch the quotes that were never opened.
The KISS Quote Template is a spreadsheet built around the full cost list above, not just labour and materials — so the price you send still contains a profit when the job ends. Itemised layout, automatic totals, space for exclusions and validity. Five euro, one file.
See the templates →