What to include in a contractor estimate

The nine parts

1. Your identity, in full

Legal business name, address, phone, licence and registration numbers, and insurance particulars if you carry them. A price on an unheaded page reads like a guess, and in a dispute it's worth very little.

2. An estimate number and a date

Sequential numbering makes revisions traceable — v1 and v3 of the same bathroom, six weeks apart, cause real arguments. Date every version.

3. A scope the customer can picture

Not "supply and install flooring". What's being removed, what's going in by product and model, what preparation is included, how the edges and transitions are handled, and what the site looks like when you leave. Scope specificity is the difference between a change order and a fight. The trade templates have these lines pre-written, so you're editing rather than composing at nine at night.

4. What is not included

The single highest-value block on the page. Every exclusion exists because a contractor somewhere did that work for nothing. Structural surprises, permits, patching and painting after your work, owner-supplied materials, disposal of things that aren't yours — see the exclusions guide.

5. Allowances for anything undecided

If the customer hasn't chosen the tile, put a dollar figure against it and state what happens when they choose above it: the difference plus your markup, added by change order. Say it before they go shopping and it's a process. Say it after and it's a confrontation.

6. Price, and a payment schedule with triggers

Subtotal, tax, total. Then when money moves and what causes it to move: deposit on acceptance, a progress payment at a visible milestone, balance on completion. "50% up front, 50% at the end" invites a debate about what "the end" means; "balance due on completion of the final walkthrough" doesn't.

7. A change order clause

Extra work is priced and signed before it happens. Every time, including the small ones. The jobs that end badly are almost never the ones with a formal change order — they're the ones where somebody said "just add it to the bill".

8. Warranty terms

What you warrant, for how long, and what's excluded. Separate your workmanship warranty from manufacturers' material warranties, and say plainly that owner-supplied materials aren't covered.

9. Expiry and a signature line

Material pricing moves; put a validity date on the face of it. And end with a signature block, because the physical act of signing is what converts a price into a job. An estimate with nowhere to sign is a document the customer takes to your competitor.

Length is not the same as thoroughness

A two-page estimate that a homeowner reads beats a six-page one they skim. Put the scope and the price where they can be found in ten seconds, and keep the terms tight and readable rather than in six-point legal boilerplate nobody looks at. Plain language holds up better than borrowed legalese anyway.

Same day beats perfect

The measurable thing about winning quotes is speed. The customer's interest peaks while you're standing in their kitchen and decays from that moment. A solid estimate sent that evening beats an immaculate one sent Thursday. That's the entire argument for having templates ready: the writing is already done, so the only thing between the site visit and a sent estimate is the pricing.