How to quote a job without underpricing yourself

There are two ways to quote. One is to pull a number out of the air that feels about right and matches what you charged last time. The other is to build the number from its parts so you know it covers your costs *and* pays you. The second one takes barely 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. Miss one and you are working for less than you think.

1. Labour — your time, costed at a day rate that already includes the days you *cannot* bill: travel, quoting, paperwork, the rained-off afternoon. If your rate only covers hammer-in-hand hours, you are undercharging by a third before you start.
2. Materials — everything you buy in, at *your* price, plus a handling margin. You sourced it, you carried it, you carry the risk if it is wrong. A 10–20% markup on materials is normal and fair.
3. Overhead — van, tools, insurance, phone, fuel, the app subscriptions. Spread your monthly fixed costs across the jobs you actually win and add a slice to each one.
4. Margin — profit on top of all of the above. This is not greed; it is the buffer that survives a bad debt, a price rise, or the month you only land two jobs.

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

Cost it, then check the rate

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

Keep a small library of your common line items with sensible default rates — a bathroom’s worth of pipework, a consumer-unit swap, a room repaint — so you are not estimating from scratch every time. The first job builds the library; every job after that gets faster and more consistent.

The 60-second on-site quote

Speed wins work. The tradesman who hands over a clean, professional quote before they leave the driveway beats the one who promises to "email it tonight" and gets to it three days later. By then the customer has two other numbers and a favourite.

So the goal is to quote on site, while you are standing in the job and the customer is keen. That only works if pricing is fast:

• Pull line items from your rate library instead of typing them fresh.
• Let the tool apply the right VAT treatment per line so you are not doing tax in your head.
• Add the materials markup and overhead as defaults, not afterthoughts.
• Hand over a numbered PDF — or take a signature on the phone — before you pack the van.

Done this way, a quote is a 60-second job, not an evening of admin. That is the whole reason MarginTap exists: type the line items once, hand over a VAT-correct quote on the spot, and turn the accepted one into an 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 get the work is to cut your margin to nothing, you are buying a problem: the same job, the same risk, none of the reward. A customer who only chooses on price will leave you for the next cheapest quote anyway. Price for the business you want, and let the race-to-the-bottom jobs go to someone else.

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