Most estimates that lose money are not badly priced. They are badly written. The rate was fine, the labour was fine, and then the skip, the parking, the two trips to the merchant and the making good came out of the profit because none of them appeared on the paper.
This is the full anatomy of an estimate that both wins the work and survives contact with the job.
1. Your details, done properly
This is the part everyone treats as decoration. It is partly a legal obligation.
If you trade through a limited company, the trading disclosure rules under the Companies Act 2006 require your business documents to show the registered company name, the company number, the place of registration and the registered office address. Not just “Dave’s Plumbing Ltd” and a mobile number.
If you are a sole trader using a business name that is not your own name, you must give your own name and an address at which documents can be served.
Add to that: phone, email, VAT number if you are registered, and any scheme registrations that actually mean something to a customer, such as Gas Safe, NICEIC, or your trade body number. Those are trust signals, and they are free.
2. The customer and the job
Full name, address of the property (which is often not their billing address), and a job reference of your own. A reference matters more than it looks: it is what turns three documents into one trail when there is a query nine months later.
Date the document. Estimates without dates cause arguments about which version was accepted.
3. Scope of works
Two or three sentences in plain English describing what you are actually going to do. Not line items yet, the shape of the job.
Remove existing bathroom suite and floor tiles. Reposition soil connection to allow WC on the window wall. Supply and fit customer-selected suite, retile floor and walls to full height in the shower area and half height elsewhere. Reinstate flooring, make good and leave clean.
This paragraph is doing quiet work. It is the boundary. Everything inside it is priced, everything outside it is a variation.
4. The line items
Break the job into things a customer can understand. For most trades that is:
Labour. Either days at a day rate, or a fixed figure per element of the job. Show the days if you can. “3 days @ £280” tells the customer something. “Labour: £840” tells them nothing, and it is the line they will attack.
Materials. Grouped sensibly. You do not need to list every olive and every clip, but the customer should be able to see the boiler, the radiators, the suite, the timber, the cable. Big-ticket items get their own line.
Plant and hire. Scaffold, tower, breaker, dumper, dehumidifier. This is a common leak: hire gets picked up on the day and never makes it back onto the estimate.
Third parties. Anything you are subbing out or arranging. Say who does what.
If you want a fuller treatment of how to arrive at the numbers themselves, that is how to price a job.
5. The things that get forgotten
Here is where the money actually goes. Every item below is a real cost that regularly fails to appear on an estimate, and once it has not appeared, it comes out of your margin.
Access
How are you getting in? Is there a key safe, or are you waiting for someone to come home at four? Is the flat on the fourth floor with a lift that is out? Is the back garden reachable only through the house?
Price it if it costs you time. If it does not cost you time yet, put it in as an assumption so that it becomes a variation if it changes:
Priced on the basis of full access between 8am and 5pm Monday to Friday, and a place to store materials on site.
Parking, permits and charges
A permit from the council, a suspension of a bay, a meter, London’s Congestion Charge and ULEZ, or a Clean Air Zone in a city such as Birmingham, Bristol or Sheffield if your van does not meet the standard. These change, so check the relevant council or TfL for current rates rather than working from a figure you remember.
On a five-day job in a controlled zone this is not trivial. Put it on the estimate as its own line, or exclude it explicitly and say the customer arranges parking.
Waste and skip hire
Two costs, not one. There is the skip or the tip run, and there is the hour or two of loading that goes with it.
There is also a compliance angle worth knowing. Under the duty of care in section 34 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 you are responsible for waste you produce being handled properly. If you transport construction or demolition waste, including waste you produced yourself, you generally need to be registered as an upper tier waste carrier with the Environment Agency, or the equivalent regulator in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. Registration lasts a fixed period and has a fee, so check the current requirements and cost on GOV.UK for your nation.
Either way, waste goes on the estimate. A grab lorry is not a rounding error.
Materials price volatility
Building materials prices have moved sharply and unpredictably in recent years, and merchant quotes routinely carry short validity windows. If your estimate is valid for 30 days but your timber price is valid for 7, you are carrying that gap.
The fix is one sentence:
Material prices are based on supplier quotations current at the date of this estimate and are subject to confirmation at the point of order.
Provisional sums
Anything the customer has not chosen yet. Tiles, taps, sanitaryware, worktops, flooring, light fittings. Give an allowance, label it clearly as provisional, and state the rate it is based on so the conversation later is about their choice, not about your pricing.
Making good and decoration
The single most common scope argument in the trades. You chased the wall, you filled it. Did you skim it? Did you paint it? Whose paint?
Say so, one way or the other. “Making good to a plaster finish ready for decoration. Decoration not included.”
Your own time before the job
The survey, the drive to it, the two hours writing the estimate itself, the merchant enquiries. On a job you win, this is recovered through your rate. On the ones you do not win, it is not recovered at all, which is why your rate has to carry it. The arithmetic for that is in how to price a job.
6. Exclusions
A short list of what you are not doing. It reads as professional rather than defensive, because it stops the customer building an assumption you would then have to argue them out of.
Typical exclusions worth naming:
- asbestos survey, removal or licensed work
- structural works, or anything requiring a structural engineer
- building control fees and applications
- electrical or gas works outside the scope of this estimate
- decoration and floor coverings
- removal of waste not generated by these works
- repairs to anything found defective once opened up
7. Assumptions
Different from exclusions, and just as useful. Exclusions say what you will not do. Assumptions say what you believe to be true. When an assumption turns out to be wrong, you have a documented reason for the price changing.
Assumed: existing consumer unit is serviceable and has spare ways. Existing pipework is 15mm copper. No hidden services in the chased walls.
8. The money
Subtotal, VAT position, total. Be unambiguous about whether the figure includes VAT, and if you are not registered, do not imply that you are. The detail of how to present VAT to domestic against commercial customers, and the reverse charge trap for construction subcontractors, is covered in VAT on estimates and quotes.
Then the terms that turn a price into a deal:
- Deposit or staged payments, with what triggers each stage
- Payment terms, in days, from the invoice date
- Validity: “This estimate is valid for 30 days from the date above”
- Variations: agreed in writing, with a price, before the work is done
9. Terms and conditions
One page, at the back. Guarantee on your workmanship, manufacturer warranties passed through, insurance, what happens if the customer cancels, ownership of materials until paid for, and how a complaint gets handled. Building it once is covered in the estimate template guide.
This is general guidance rather than legal advice, and consumer contract rules do change, so check GOV.UK or your trade body for the current position before you finalise your terms.
The checklist
Print this and stick it inside the van door.
- Your legal details and registrations
- Customer, site address, date, reference
- Scope in plain English
- Labour, itemised
- Materials, with the big items named
- Plant and hire
- Access
- Parking and permits
- Waste and skip
- Provisional sums, labelled
- Making good and decoration, in or out
- Exclusions
- Assumptions
- VAT position
- Deposit and payment terms
- Validity period
- Variation process
- Terms and conditions
Eighteen items is a lot to remember at nine at night with the laptop on your knee, which is exactly why it should live in a template rather than in your head. TradeScribe works from that checklist by default, so the estimate that comes out of your rough notes already has the exclusions, assumptions and payment terms on it before you have thought about them.