How to stop losing money on custom quotes

The custom quote is the smallest business unit most trade and service businesses ship. It is also the largest recurring source of unpriced-for work. Every unbudgeted travel hour, every free minor add-on, every "we'll figure it out on the day" is a margin leak that isn't in the ledger — because it never showed up as a cost.

Give every quote four lines. Not five, not two. Line 1: scope — precisely what is included, in the customer's language. Line 2: exclusions — what is not included, listed by name. Line 3: price — the number, in the currency, with the payment terms. Line 4: validity — how long the price stands.

The exclusions line does more work than the scope line. The scope tells the customer what they're getting; the exclusions tell them what they'd have to pay extra for. Naming an exclusion up front turns a later add-on into a straightforward change-order rather than an argument about whether it "should have been included."

Build the price from the checklist you already have, not the number you guessed. Every recurring job type deserves a costing checklist — materials, hours, transport, waste, a discipline line for margin. If a job type is quoted more than three times a month it deserves a checklist. Anything under that can still use a per-quote build.

Track the quote-to-invoice gap. The average job finishes at more than its quote. That gap has a name — variance — and if you don't measure it, the next quote is guessing at the wrong number. Ninety minutes at the monthly close reading variance across the last twenty jobs, and every quote you send from then on is grounded in what actually happened last month rather than what you hoped.

Inside the Study Desk, the Pricing & Profitability programme turns the four-line template into an industry-specific checklist for your line of business — with a change-order script and a monthly variance review you can hand to a bookkeeper.