Quotation for Work

Step 1 & 2 — your business details at the top, customer name and the property address underneath. The reference number matters more than people think: it's how you find this quote when the customer rings back six weeks later.

Step 3 — what you'll be doing, step by step. Avoid one-liners like "new boiler" — write enough detail that there's no room for confusion later. Add as many rows as the job needs.

Step 4 — spell out what's coming with the job. Certification, warranty, site protection, rubbish removal, and whether VAT is included.

Step 5 — the most important section. Almost every dispute on a job comes back to something the tradesperson assumed was obviously not included, but the customer assumed was. If a customer could plausibly claim something was within scope when it wasn't, it's an exclusion you forgot to write.

Step 6 — list major materials line by line with quantities, then labour separately. Transparency does the persuading: a customer who can see what they're paying for will trust the total more than a single combined number.

Step 7 — vague payment terms are how cash flow gets mangled. Explain what each payment is for (especially the deposit) and tie stage payments to visible milestones, not arbitrary dates.

Step 8 — tells the customer how to accept and creates a written record of when they did. Email reply confirming "happy to go ahead" is legally binding too, so the signature line is for the customer's benefit more than anything.