Estimate vs quote vs proposal: which one should you send?
The three words mean different things to a customer and to a court. Pick the right one and say so on the document.
Contractors use the three words interchangeably. Customers and courts treat them differently. Here is which one you are sending.
Estimate
An educated guess. "Probably around $2,400, could change once I open the wall." Not a commitment to price. Fine for the first conversation, useless for getting a job started, and if you write "estimate" on the document you should expect the customer to treat the number as soft. If the final bill is 30 percent higher, you will have a fight.
Quote
A fixed price for a defined scope, good for a set time. "$2,400 to replace the water heater as described, valid 30 days." Once accepted, it is the price. The scope has to be specific enough that both of you can tell what is and is not included, because anything not listed is a change order.
Proposal
A quote plus the terms: timeline, payment schedule, warranty, and what happens if things change. It reads like a small contract because it is one. When the customer accepts it, you have an agreement on scope, price, time, and money, which is everything a dispute is usually about. This is what you want for any job worth more than a few hundred dollars.
What to send, and when
- First phone call, no site visit: an estimate, spoken or in a text. Do not write it down as a number they can hold you to.
- After you have seen the job: a proposal. Specific scope, one price, timeline, payment terms, warranty, valid-through date, and a way to accept it on the spot.
- Mid-job changes: a written change order, even if it is two lines, accepted the same way.
Two habits that prevent most arguments
Put a valid-through date on every proposal so an old price cannot be accepted after your costs move. And get the acceptance in writing with a timestamp, a typed name on a phone is enough under the E-SIGN Act, so "I never agreed to that" is settled by a PDF instead of a memory.
BidWriter Pro turns your notes into a proposal with all of those parts, expires it on your schedule, and records the acceptance. See a sample.
Free, no account: job price calculator, markup vs margin, hourly rate, and 84 sample estimates.
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