How to write a quote without underpricing the work

Write your rates and rules down once. After that a quote is a lookup, not a decision: pull the lines from your price book, let a chat assistant assemble the wording, and read the number yourself before it sends. The machine writes the words. You own the number.

Here is the fear, named first. Quoting fast is how you win the work, and quoting wrong is how you lose money on it, and from where you are sitting those two feel like the same risk. So the quote waits until Sunday night, and by then someone else has already sent theirs.

You do not need to be quicker at sums. You need the sums already written down.

On this page: Why it takes all evening · What goes in a quote · The price book · Build it in four steps · How long it stays valid · What breaks · What it costs · In short · FAQ

Why does writing a quote take all evening?

Because the slow part is not the arithmetic. It is the writing.

The maths takes a minute. What eats the evening is the rest of it. Listing the parts. Spelling out the labour. Saying what is included, then what is not, so nobody argues later. Adding the terms. Making the whole thing sound like a business and not a text message. That is assembly. Assembly is what a language model is good at. Pricing is not.

So split the job in two. The pricing is yours and stays yours. The assembly can be handed over the moment your prices exist somewhere a machine can read.

What should a quote include?

A quote is a priced description of the work, clear enough that both of you would read it the same way in six weeks.

Six things, every time:

• Who and where. Their name, the address or the project, the date.
• The work, in plain lines. Each line with a quantity, a rate and a total. Not one lump sum with no working.
• Materials. Separately, with your markup already in the number.
• What is included. The assumed things, written down anyway.
• What is not included. The things you will price separately if they come up.
• Terms. How long the price holds, what deposit you take, when the balance is due.

Five of those six are the same on every quote you ever send. That is the part worth writing once.

Write the price book first

A price book is your rates and your rules, written down in one place, so that pricing a job becomes looking something up instead of deciding it again at 9pm.

This is the Standard First method: the tool gets the attention, the written standard decides the result. Here is the whole thing.

Section 04 earns its place. Most of the money lost on a fixed price is not lost on the rate. It is lost on the thing nobody said was excluded.

Build it in four steps

Start at step one. It is free and it takes an afternoon.

1. Write the price book and paste it in. Fill in the five sections. Open a chat assistant. Paste the price book, describe the job, and ask for a quote using only those rates. Read what comes back. It costs nothing, and it is already faster than your evening.
2. Save it so you stop re-explaining. Assistants let you store instructions they reuse, under various names. Check your own, because some keep it behind the paid plan. Put the price book there, with the rule that it must never invent a rate. Then you paste the job description on its own.
3. Connect it to the tool you already pay for. Most accounting software sends quotes as well as invoices. Move the wording out of the chat window and into the thing that already holds your customer list, and that can turn an accepted quote into an invoice.
4. Let it draft on enquiry, and queue. An agent reads the enquiry, drafts the quote from the price book, and puts it in front of you. It does not send. You read the number, you press send.

Nobody needs step four to get their evenings back. Step one does most of it.

How long should a quote be valid?

Long enough for them to decide, short enough that your materials cost has not moved. Thirty days is the common choice and it is a choice, not a rule.

Put the expiry on the quote itself. A price with no end date is a price you will be held to next spring, when the same job costs you more to do.

What breaks

Four things, and the same rule covers all of them.

• The job is not in the book. Something unusual, something you have never priced. The assistant will happily produce a confident number anyway. That number is invented.
• The site is not what the enquiry said. You find out on the day. No amount of drafting fixes this; section 04 does.
• Your prices moved and the book did not. This is the quiet one. A price book written in January and still in use in November is a price book slowly underpricing you.
• The customer describes a small job. They are not lying. They are guessing, and the guess leans their way, and so does anything working from their description alone.

The rule: if the work is not covered by what you have written down, nothing drafts it for you. You price it yourself. That is not a limitation to work around. It is the reason the rest is safe to hand over.

What it costs to run

Step one costs nothing beyond the free tier of an assistant you may already use. Step two is the same. Steps three and four depend on what you already pay for. The honest answer is that the software is rarely the expensive part. The setup time is. If you want the full comparison of doing it yourself against having it built, that is a separate piece.

In short

• Quoting is slow because of the writing, not the maths.
• Write your rates and rules down once, in five sections, and pricing becomes a lookup.
• Let the assistant assemble the wording from the book. Never let it invent a rate.
• Say what is excluded. That is where fixed-price money is lost.
• Put an expiry date on it, and put a review date on the book.

Common questions

Can AI write a quote for me?
It can write the quote. It should not decide the price. Give it your rates and rules and it will assemble a clear, consistent document in seconds. Ask it to price something your book does not cover and it will guess, confidently, and the guess will be low.

What should a quote include?
Who and where, the work in priced lines, materials with your markup, what is included, what is excluded, and your terms. Five of those six are the same every time.

How long should a quote stay valid?
Long enough for them to decide and short enough that your costs have not moved. Thirty days is common. Whatever you choose, write it on the quote.

How do I stop underpricing myself?
Put a minimum job value and a materials markup in writing, as numbers, before you are on the phone to someone nice. A number survives a friendly conversation. A good intention does not.

Do I need special quoting software?
Not to start. Step one is a document and a free chat assistant. Software helps once you are sending enough quotes that retyping customer details is the annoying part.

The price book as a page you can fill in is free here. If you would rather talk about the version that drafts on enquiry and queues for your approval, email me.

References and further reading

• Xero: send quotes, and convert an accepted quote to an invoice
• Sage: convert quotes to invoices or sales orders