How to quote a job without underpricing yourself

There are two ways to quote. The first: pull a number that feels about right and looks like what you got last time. The second: build the number from its parts, so you know it covers your costs *and* pays you. The second takes only a little longer once you have done it a few times, and it is the difference between a busy year and a profitable one.

The four parts of every price

Every honest quote is four numbers added together. Forget one and you are working for less than you think.

1. Labour — your time, at a day rate that already accounts for the days you *do not* invoice: travel, quoting, site visits, paperwork, the afternoon lost to rain. If your rate only covers tools-in-hand hours, you are underpaying yourself by a third before you start.
2. Materials — everything you buy, at *your* price, plus a mark-up. You sourced them, you carried them, and the risk if something is wrong is yours. A 10–20% mark-up on materials is normal and fair.
3. Overheads — van, tools, insurance, phone, fuel, subscriptions. Spread your monthly overheads across the jobs you actually win and add a slice to each.
4. Margin — the profit on top of everything else. That is not greed; it is the cushion that survives a bad debt, a price rise, or the month you only closed two jobs.

A price that only covers labour and materials is not a price. It is a donation with a receipt.

Cost it up, then sense-check the rate

Build the number from the four parts — then check it against your day rate. If a job works out to three days and the total only pays you two days of labour, the materials or the margin are too thin. Fix it before you send, not after you have started.

Keep a small library of your recurring line items with sensible default prices — a bathroom first fix, a consumer unit swap, painting a room — so you are not costing from scratch every time. The first job builds the library; every job after it goes faster and more consistently.

The 60-second quote on site

Speed wins work. The tradesman who hands over a clean, professional quote before he leaves the driveway beats the one who promises to "send it tonight" and turns up with it three days later. By then the customer has two other numbers and a favourite.

The goal, then, is to quote on site, while you are in the job and the customer is warm. That only works if the maths is quick:

• Pull line items from your price library instead of retyping them.
• Let the tool apply the right VAT treatment per line, so you are not doing tax in your head.
• Set your materials mark-up and overheads as defaults, not a last-minute add-on.
• Hand over a numbered PDF — or take a signature on the phone — before you put the toolbox back in the van.

Done this way, a quote is a 60-second job, not an evening of paperwork. That is the whole reason MarginTap exists: you enter the line items once, hand over a quote with the right VAT on the spot, and turn an accepted one into a numbered invoice with a single tap.

[ Quote on site in 60 seconds → ]

When to walk away from a price

Not every job is worth winning. If the only way to land it is to zero out your margin, you are buying a problem: same work, same risk, no reward. A customer who chooses on price alone will leave you for the next cheapest quote anyway. Price for the business you want, and leave the race to the bottom to someone else.

Once your prices are solid, the next leak to plug is the quoting *process* itself. See five quoting mistakes that cost jobs — most of them have nothing to do with the number.