Most electricians lose money on a job long before they pick up a tool. They lose it on the quote.
A quote is not a price. It is the document that decides what you are agreeing to do, what happens when the job changes, and when you get paid. Get it right and the job runs itself. Get it vague and you spend three weeks arguing about a light fitting nobody wrote down.
Here is how to put one together properly.
What every quote needs
Whatever the job size, a quote should answer six questions without the customer having to ask:
- What you are doing. Line by line, in plain words. "Rewire" is not a scope. "Replace consumer unit, run new circuits to kitchen and two bedrooms, install and test 14 outlets" is a scope.
- What you are not doing. The most valuable line on most quotes. Making good plaster, painting, moving furniture, disposing of old fittings, working around a locked room. If it is not on the list, say so.
- What it costs. Split labour and materials so the customer can see what they are paying for. A single lump sum invites haggling because there is nothing to point at.
- When you can start and roughly how long. Not a promise, an estimate. Say it is an estimate.
- How and when you get paid. Deposit, stage payments, balance on completion. Silence here means the customer decides, and they will decide later than you want.
- How long the price holds. More on this below.
Fixed price or time and materials
Quote a fixed price when you can see the whole job. New build, a defined set of outlets, a like for like replacement. The customer gets certainty and you get the upside if you work fast.
Quote time and materials when you genuinely cannot see the whole job. Old buildings, faults you have not traced yet, anything behind a wall you have not opened. Trying to fix-price an unknown is how you end up eating two days of work.
The mistake is picking based on what feels easier to sell. A fixed price on a fault you have not diagnosed is not a quote, it is a bet.
If the customer wants certainty on a job you cannot see, quote the investigation as a fixed price and the repair separately once you know. That is an honest answer and most people accept it.
Price the whole job, not just the hours
The parts of a job that get missed are rarely the obvious ones. When you are working out a number, count:
- Travel, both ways, every day you will be on site
- The trip to the supplier, and the second trip for the thing you forgot
- Waiting time when another trade is in your way
- Testing and certification
- Cleanup and disposal
- The paperwork itself
None of these are billable in the customer's mind. All of them are hours in yours. If you do not build them into the number, you are donating them.
Variations are where the margin goes
The customer asks for one more outlet while you are already on site. It takes twenty minutes. You say yes because you are standing right there and it feels petty to argue.
Do that four times on one job and you have given away most of a day.
The fix is not to refuse. It is to write it down. A variation needs the same three things as the original quote: what changed, what it costs, and confirmation before you do it. A message saying "that extra outlet in the hallway is EC$X, happy to add it, just confirm" takes thirty seconds and turns a giveaway into revenue.
Two things make this easier. Send it in writing every time, even for small changes, so there is a trail. And say the price out loud when they ask, not at the end. A customer who hears the number up front almost never disputes it. A customer who sees it for the first time on the final invoice usually does.
Take a deposit
A deposit does two jobs. It covers your materials so you are not financing the customer's project out of your own pocket, and it filters out people who were never going to pay.
The right amount depends on how material-heavy the job is. A job that is mostly your labour needs less up front than one where you are buying a consumer unit and a few hundred metres of cable before you start. Set it against what you actually have to spend before day one, and say clearly what it covers and whether it is refundable.
If a customer will not pay a deposit on a job that requires you to buy materials first, that is information. Take it seriously.
Put a date on the price
Copper moves. Supplier prices move. A quote you wrote in March should not still be binding in September.
One line fixes it: "This price is valid for 30 days." It is not aggressive, everyone in the trade does it, and it gives you a clean reason to requote without looking like you are pushing the price up.
Follow up once, properly
Most quotes are not rejected. They are forgotten. The customer got three prices, put off the decision, and moved on.
One follow-up a few days later, asking whether they have any questions rather than whether they have decided, recovers a surprising number of jobs. It reads as service rather than pressure. If they say no, ask what the winning quote had that yours did not. They will usually tell you, and it is often not the price.
The quote is the start of getting paid
A clear quote does more than win work. It sets up the invoice. When the scope was written down, the variations were confirmed in writing, and the payment terms were agreed before anyone picked up a tool, the invoice is just arithmetic. Nobody argues with it.
When the quote was a number on a WhatsApp message, the invoice is a negotiation.
That is the real reason to take quoting seriously. Not paperwork for its own sake, but because every hour you spend chasing payment is an hour you are not on a job.