How to write a quote that wins the job.

Structure: what a good quote covers

Keep it clean and predictable. A homeowner reading multiple quotes shouldn't have to hunt for the basics. Cover: what work you're doing (the scope), materials if they're relevant to show, your total price, your proposed start date, roughly how long the job will take, and your payment terms. That's it — resist the urge to pad it out with anything that doesn't help the homeowner decide.

Homeowners are mostly focused on two things: the total cost, and when you can start. Make sure both are impossible to miss — don't bury the price in a paragraph or leave the start date vague ("soon," "when I get a chance") if you can help it.

A consistent order also helps you personally — once you've got a template that covers all of the above, writing the next quote is mostly filling in the blanks rather than starting from a blank page each time. That speed matters, since a fast quote is often a winning quote regardless of how it's priced.

Pricing psychology: itemised vs. lump sum

An itemised quote — broken into labour, materials, and any distinct stages of work — tends to build more trust than a single lump-sum figure, even when the total is identical. Breaking the price down shows your working, which makes the number feel considered rather than plucked out of the air. It also makes it much easier to agree on changes later, since you can adjust one line rather than renegotiating the whole quote.

That said, don't over-itemise a small job — three line items for a two-hour job looks like padding, not transparency. Match the level of detail to the size of the job.

For bigger jobs, consider breaking the total into stages — deposit, progress payment, final payment tied to milestones like completion of the rough-in or the final fix. This does two things at once: it reassures the homeowner that they're not handing over the full amount up front for work that hasn't happened yet, and it protects your own cash flow on a longer job by spreading payment across the timeline rather than waiting until the very end to get paid for weeks of work.

What to include — and what to leave out

Include anything that affects the price or the outcome: the scope of work, materials (brand or grade if it matters), total price, GST treatment if you're registered, how long the quote is valid for, deposit and payment terms, and your contact details. Leave out generic filler — boilerplate paragraphs about "quality workmanship" don't help a homeowner decide and just make the important information harder to find.

If there's anything you're deliberately excluding — say, you're not responsible for repainting after a plumbing repair — say so explicitly. An assumption you didn't write down is an assumption the homeowner doesn't know you made.

It's worth thinking about exclusions the same way you think about inclusions — as information the homeowner needs, not as small print to protect yourself. "Excludes scaffolding hire, which we'll arrange separately if needed" reads as helpful and upfront. The same fact discovered halfway through the job, with no warning, reads as a tradie trying to squeeze in an extra charge — even when it was always going to be necessary.

Common mistakes that lose jobs

The most common one is vagueness — a single number with no explanation of what it covers. Close behind is being slow: a detailed quote that arrives four days later often loses to a mediocre one that arrived within the hour, simply because the homeowner has already moved on. Other frequent mistakes: leaving out a start date, forgetting to state how long the quote is valid before prices might change, and not making it obvious how to accept the quote and get the job underway.

Another mistake worth naming: sending the same generic quote regardless of who's asking. It's tempting when you're busy to reuse a near-identical quote for every similar job, but homeowners can usually tell when a quote hasn't actually been written for their specific job — a wrong address, a leftover reference to a different type of work, or details that don't quite match what they asked for. Even a quick personal touch, like referencing something specific from their job post, signals that you actually read what they need.

Following up on a quote you've sent

Sending the quote isn't the end of the process. Homeowners are often weighing up two or three quotes at once and can go quiet simply because they're still deciding, not because they've ruled you out. A short, friendly check-in a few days after sending a quote can recover jobs that would otherwise be lost to silence rather than an actual no — worth doing on anything you were genuinely hoping to win.