Quoting for a Job – The 7 Things to Include in Every Quotation
Preparing a quote for a potential client can sometimes feel like a bit of a minefield. What should you include? How should you present it? And what will give your quote the best chance of success?
In my experience, how you present your prices plays a key part in how they’re received, whether or not they’ll be confirmed, and if you’ll earn a fair amount for the work you do. In fact, I’d argue that in many cases the presentation of your prices is actually more important than the prices themselves.
Think about it this way: if you were searching for a premium service from a builder, for example, and you received a quote scribbled on a crumpled piece of paper, you’d probably decide not to go ahead. This kind of proposal is something you might expect if you were looking for a cheap and cheerful service instead. The presentation of your quote, and the thought and care that goes into it, reflects the kind of service you’re going to provide.
With this in mind, you want to make sure you’re getting your quotes right. But there are so many things you could include in a quotation that it’s hard to know what’s essential. To give you a helping hand, here are the 7 things I’d recommend including in every quotation you put together.
How to quote for a job
When it comes to sending a quote to a client, I would suggest considering the following 7 points in turn. If you take into account and include all these things, you’ll avoid missing something important, and you’ll give your quote the best possible chance of getting approved.
1) Your understanding of the scope of the project
How many times have you heard of (or directly experienced!) misunderstandings with clients? Sometimes the client will assume that something is included when it isn’t. Equally, it’s just as easy for freelancers to misinterpret a request from a client who hasn’t expressed their needs very clearly.
By including your understanding of the scope of the project in your quotation, you’re making sure there’s no room for misunderstandings. If you mention everything that’s included (and potentially everything that isn’t too!), the client can’t come back to you after you’ve delivered the project saying they expected more.
This is also a good opportunity to check that you’ve fully understood the customer’s requirements. If you aren't sure exactly what the client is looking for, ask questions before you put together your quote.
2) Your price to meet the client’s brief and expectations
Of course, in any quote, you always need to include your price. Start by stating how much the job will cost to meet the brief and fulfil the client’s expectations as requested. I’d also recommend only providing an overall price for the project rather than a breakdown of costs.
Although you’re going to be listing the deliverables when you set out your understanding of the scope of the project, don’t feel the need to break down your price to demonstrate exactly how much each element costs. Many clients won’t be interested in that level of detail, and it could invite pushback or questioning of your pricing. You might find the customer wants to remove a part of the project they don’t want to pay for but that’s essential for you to do the job well, such as research or studying of style guides.
A single price for the project that will allow you to meet the client’s brief and expectations is all the customer needs to know. If you’d like help to understand how much you should be charging for any given job, Charge with Confidence will guide you through calculating your rates so you always know what you need to be earning from any project you quote.
3) A cheaper option if the client might be willing to compromise
Besides providing a price to complete the job as requested by the client, I would always include a cheaper option where possible.
Customers often don’t realise that certain requests they make can have a huge impact on the price they’re asked to pay.
For example, urgencies should always come with a higher price attached to them. But although quick turnarounds are frequently requested, clients aren’t always willing to pay for them. If they see the difference in price side by side, you might find that the urgency suddenly disappears and the client is able to wait a little longer in exchange for a lower price.
The same may be true when it comes to compromising on fiddly formats, the scope of the project, or the number of rounds of edits. Anything that makes the job easier or more enjoyable for you could make for a cheaper option for the client.
By providing a cheaper option, you’re also showing potential customers that even if they can’t afford your original fee, you’re willing to be flexible and might be able to offer them an alternative at a more accessible price. I discuss this in more depth in my blog post on making sure you reach the negotiation stage when sending quotes to customers.
4) Timeline for delivery
The next thing you need to include is a timeline for delivery, whether the customer has requested one or not! This is essential when it comes to setting expectations with the client.
Your timeline could be a fixed date if the client has given you a deadline and needs the deliverables by a certain day. Alternatively, if there’s room for flexibility and the client hasn’t specified a date, you could provide a number of working days or weeks from when the client accepts your quote.
5) The date the quotation is valid until
As well as the timeline for delivery, I can’t overstate the importance of including a date that your quotation will remain valid until.
It’s easy to tell a client that you can have something ready for them in 3 working days, but what happens if the client confirms your quote when you need to be focusing on another project instead? The result is you having to work extra hours or the client being disappointed. Either way, this is the kind of mistake you only make once!
Sometimes project start dates get pushed back and you might regret accepting the same terms if you’re busier than you were when you quoted for the project. So always make sure you include a date that you need to receive confirmation by to uphold the price and meet the timeline for delivery.
6) Your payment terms and accepted methods of payment
Once again, including your payment terms and accepted methods of payment will set expectations and make sure that there are no misunderstandings when it comes to getting paid for your hard work.
The customer will need to know if you expect payment upfront or if you only accept payment by bank transfer, for example. By stating this clearly in your quote, if the customer has any issues with your payment terms or methods, these can be discussed (and hopefully resolved) straight away.
Always make it clear that by accepting your quotation, the customer is accepting your payment terms as well.
7) An upsell that might be of interest to the client
While including a cheaper option is a good idea, it also makes sense to include an upsell that the customer might be interested in too.
Could you offer something extra to complement the service you’ve quoted for? Think about what you could add that might be beneficial to the client, and include the additional cost and adjusted timeline for delivery in your quote.
Not only will this potentially bring in more income for you, without the additional marketing burden, but it also gives the client a third option to consider. Most customers will go for the middle option, which was what they originally requested. But whichever option they choose, it makes your full price seem less expensive!
8) BONUS: terms of business
This is a bonus suggestion, but including your terms of business gives your quote an extra level of professionalism. It shows that you are running your business in a way that works for you and that you won’t be changing how you do things on demand.
Some customers have a tendency to view freelancers as external employees and an extension of their own company. Having your own terms of business not only helps to protect you from a legal point of view, it sets expectations in terms of what you’re willing to accept.
During our Freelance Insights interview, translator and lawyer-linguist Nicole Fenwick kindly shared some template terms of business for readers to adapt. If you’d like to use these for your service-based business, you can find them here. I know that some of my mentees have already benefitted from this template to great effect and have had higher prices confirmed thanks to the professional nature of their quotes!
I really hope you’ve found all these considerations useful when it comes to presenting your quotations and knowing what you should be including in them.
If you’d like some additional support, I’ve put together two templates to help you send professional-looking quotes to potential clients. The first template provides you with wording you can adapt so you can share your quotation in the body of an email, while the second template gives you the option of sending your quote as a professionally designed PDF attachment.
I’d love to hear how you find these free resources and if they help you command higher prices. Do let me know if they make you feel more confident when sending a quote for your services and charging what they’re worth!