How to Quote for a Job (And Win It): A Tradesman's Guide

Quoting is one of those things nobody teaches you. You learn your trade, you get your qualifications, maybe you work for someone else for a few years, and then when you go out on your own, you're suddenly expected to know how to price work, write quotes, and close jobs. Most tradespeople learn by trial and error, and that usually means underquoting a few jobs, losing money, and slowly figuring it out.

This guide covers the whole process, from the site visit to sending the finished quote, whether you're a plumber, painter, builder, electrician, tiler, or any other trade.

Step 1: Do a Proper Site Visit

Don't quote blind. It's tempting to give a price over the phone or from a couple of photos, especially when you're busy. But pricing a job you haven't properly looked at is how you end up eating costs or having awkward conversations with customers halfway through.

When you visit the site, take your time. Look at everything. If you're a plumber quoting a bathroom refit, check the existing pipework, look at access points, check the floor and walls. If you're a builder quoting an extension, check ground conditions, look at what's already there, and think about what might go wrong.

Take photos of everything. Make notes, whether that's on your phone, in a notepad, or just a voice memo to yourself. These notes are what you'll use to build the quote later.

Ask the customer questions too:

• What's their budget?
• What finish are they expecting?
• Are they supplying any materials?
• Do they have a timeline in mind?

The more you know now, the more accurate your quote will be.

Step 2: Work Out Your Costs

Every job has three cost categories: labour, materials, and overheads.

Labour

You need to know your day rate (or hourly rate) and honestly assess how long the job will take. If you think it'll take three days, price it for three and a half. Things always take longer than you expect. There's always a trip to the supplier, something that doesn't go to plan, or a customer who wants to chat while you're trying to work.

Materials

Price everything up properly. Check current prices at your suppliers. Don't guess from memory. Material costs move, and a figure that was right six months ago might not be right today. Include delivery if needed, and add a small margin for waste. Nobody uses exactly the right amount of plasterboard, and offcuts add up.

Overheads

Think about what it actually costs you to run your business: van costs, fuel, insurance, tools, phone, accountant, and so on. If you're not factoring overheads into your pricing, you're subsidising your customers out of your own pocket.

Add it all up, then add your profit margin on top. Profit isn't a dirty word. You're running a business, not a charity. A 15-25% margin is normal across most trades, depending on the type of work and the competition in your area.

Step 3: Decide on Your Quote Format

There are two main ways to structure a quote.

Scope-based quotes break the job into phases, with a description of what each phase includes and a single total at the bottom. This works well for bigger jobs like bathroom refits, extensions, or full house renovations. It gives the customer clarity on what's happening at each stage without showing them a line-by-line breakdown of every cost.

Itemised quotes list every individual task or item with its own price. This works well for smaller jobs or where the customer wants to see exactly where the money's going. It's also useful when a customer might want to pick and choose, for example quoting for a full garden landscaping job where they might decide to skip the new fencing.

Some jobs suit a mix of both: phases with itemised detail within each phase. Use whatever format makes the job clearest for the customer.

Step 4: Write It Up Properly

This is where most tradespeople fall down. You've done the site visit, worked out the costs, and now you need to turn that into something the customer can read and say yes to.

Your quote should include:

• Your business details
• The customer's details
• A quote reference number
• The date and a validity period
• A clear job description
• The full scope of works or itemised breakdown
• What materials are included
• What's excluded
• The price (with tax if applicable)
• Payment terms
• Any warranty you offer
• Instructions on how to accept

That's a lot to type up every time. Which is why so many tradespeople resort to sending a text message with a number, or scribbling it on paper. The problem is that vague quotes lose jobs. Research shows that 50% of customers reject quotes that are unclear, and the average homeowner gets four to six quotes before making a decision. If yours is the professional-looking one, you're already ahead.

Step 5: Send It Fast

Speed matters more than most people realise. Research from Harvard Business Review found that responding within one hour makes you seven times more likely to win the job compared to waiting even an hour longer. And according to MIT, responding within five minutes makes you 21 times more likely.

Yet the average business takes 44 hours to respond, and 23% of businesses never respond at all. If you can get your quote into the customer's hands the same day you visit, ideally within a few hours, you're not just being efficient. You're massively increasing your chances of winning the work.

This is where the traditional approach of writing quotes up in the evening or at the weekend costs you. By the time your quote lands, someone else has already won the job.

Step 6: Follow Up

If you haven't heard back within a few days, follow up. A simple message or call:

"Hi, just checking you got the quote I sent through. Happy to answer any questions."

It's not pushy. It's professional. A lot of customers fully intend to go with you but just get busy and forget to reply.

Don't follow up more than two or three times though. If they're not responding after that, they've probably gone with someone else.

Common Quoting Mistakes to Avoid

Underpricing to win work is the biggest one. It's tempting when you're starting out or when work is quiet, but it's a race to the bottom. You end up busy but not making money, which is worse than being quiet.

Not including exclusions is another common trap. If your quote doesn't say "excludes decoration" or "excludes dumpster/skip hire," the customer might assume those things are included, and then expect you to do them for free.

Quoting too slowly is a silent killer. You might write the best quote in the world, but if it arrives three days after the site visit, the customer may have already committed to someone else.

Not keeping records. Keep a copy of every quote you send. If there's ever a dispute about what was agreed, you need to be able to pull up the original document.

A Faster Way to Quote

The quoting process doesn't need to eat into your evenings. Apps like Priced let you go straight from site visit notes to a finished quote in seconds. Take a photo of your handwritten notes, type them in, or just describe the job out loud using voice-to-quote. The AI reads your notes, structures them into a professional scope of works, and generates a branded PDF ready to send.

If you've set up a price list in the app, it gets even faster. Priced matches your job description to your saved prices and fills in the costs automatically. No manual calculations, no copy-pasting from old quotes, no sitting down at the laptop at 9pm.

The result is a professional quote that lands in the customer's inbox before your competitors have even started writing theirs up.

---

Priced is an AI-powered quoting app built for tradespeople. Describe the job, and AI writes a professional quote ready to send in seconds. Try it free at getpriced.app.