How to quote a carpentry job (so you actually make money)

Plenty of carpenters quote off gut feel - a number that sounds about right and that you reckon the client will say yes to. It works often enough that you keep doing it, right up until the job that should have made $8k makes $900 and you can't work out where it went. Here's a repeatable way to quote so that doesn't happen.

Quoting and pricing are the same job: work out what the work costs you, add what you need to earn, and put that number in front of the client so they can say yes.

1. Nail down the scope before you price anything

You can't price what you haven't defined. Walk the job and write down every task, not just the obvious ones - set-out, demo, disposal, the fiddly bits around windows, the second trip for the handles. The tasks you forget are the ones that eat your margin, because you still have to do them, you just won't have charged for them.

2. Price materials off a real take-off, then add a buffer

Do a proper take-off from the plans or your measurements, get current supplier pricing (not last year's), and add an allowance for waste and offcuts on top of the take-off (most chippies use a small percentage, set from what past jobs actually wasted). Timber prices move, so a quote you copied from three months ago is already wrong.

• Frame and structural timber, sheet goods, fixings and consumables
• Hire (scaffold, props, tools you don't own)
• Tip fees and disposal
• A waste/contingency allowance so one bad length doesn't come out of your pocket

3. Cost your labour honestly

In our experience, labour is where quotes quietly lose money. Estimate the hours each stage really takes (including the slow first morning and the clean-up), then multiply by your true hourly cost - not just the wage. Your real cost per hour includes super, insurance, tool replacement, the ute, fuel, and the unbillable hours spent quoting and chasing payment.

To find your true hourly cost, add up everything it costs to keep you on the tools for a year and divide by the hours you actually bill, not the hours you are at work. The charge-out rate calculator does this sum for you.

4. Add overhead and a real margin

Overhead is everything that keeps the business running whether or not you're on the tools - phone, accounting, software, advertising, registration, insurance. Spread a share of it across each job. Then add your margin on top: this is your profit, the reward for taking on the risk, not your wage.

To spread overhead, add up a year of fixed costs, divide by your billable hours, and add that amount to every hour you quote. Then set the margin on the full cost, overhead included.

5. Present it like a professional

A clear, itemised quote is easier for a client to say yes to than a number scrawled on the back of a receipt - and it protects you. Spell out inclusions and exclusions, set payment stages for bigger jobs (deposit, frame, lock-up, completion), and put a validity date on it so a three-month-old price isn't held against you.

A worked example: pricing a deck

Say a client wants a merbau deck - the same deck as in our job costing guide. The take-off comes to $4,800 at today's supplier prices. You and your apprentice reckon it is 90 hours all up, your true hourly cost is $70, and you need a post-hole borer for a day plus a trailer load to the tip.

Two things to notice. The margin comes from dividing the cost by 0.9, not adding 10% on top: adding 10% to $12,600 gives $13,860, which is $140 short on one deck. And the job costing guide shows this same deck making $2,100, or about 15%, because job costing compares the price with direct costs only - materials, labour, hire and tip fees come to $11,900. The $700 of overhead still comes out of that $2,100, leaving the $1,400 you actually banked.

Put your own job through the calculator below and watch what the hours do to the profit.

How to price a carpentry job when the client wants a number on the spot

You have walked the job, the client is standing there, and they want a number. The number you say out loud is the one they remember. Go low to keep them warm and you spend the whole job trying to get back to a real price. Go high to be safe and you might lose work you would have won.

The honest answer is a range and a date. Say what similar jobs have come in at, what might push this one higher or lower, and when the written quote will arrive. Then hit that date. A range given on site is an estimate, not a quote - our quote vs estimate guide covers why that matters once the job starts.

You can get faster without getting sloppier. Keep a price list of the materials you use on every job. Save a template for the jobs you do most - a deck, a pergola, a set of stairs - and update it after each job with what the work really took.

• Give a range, not a single figure, and say what would push it either way
• Walk every site with the same checklist
• Never price what you have not looked at - get under the floor, check the wall, look in the ceiling
• If they push for one number, give the top of the range and put the detail in writing later

Deposits, stages and variations

On anything beyond a day or two of work, the quote should say how and when you get paid. A deposit before you order materials means you are not carrying the timber bill on your own card. Stage payments tied to milestones - frame up, lock-up, completion - keep cash coming in as the work goes out. Put the stages, the amounts and the trigger for each in the quote. Our guide on progress claims and payment stages covers how to set stages up and claim them.

Variations are where a tight quote pays for itself. Once a client accepts a quote it becomes a legally binding contract, so anything outside the scope is extra work at an extra price. When the client asks for an extra, price it in writing on the day, get a yes before you do it, and add it to the running total. Raised at the end, a variation looks like a bill for something they never agreed to; raised on the day, it looks like good service. Where part of the job is still not nailed down, quote what you can define and estimate the rest - the quote vs estimate guide covers how to word it.

The mistakes that cost you the most

• Forgetting consumables and small fixings - they add up fast across a job
• Not pricing variations as they come up (do it in writing, on the day)
• Round-number guessing instead of a real take-off
• No contingency, so the first surprise wipes out the profit
• Quoting the price you think they'll accept instead of the price the job actually costs

Do this consistently and two things happen: you stop winning jobs that were always going to lose money, and you can see your margin in the job profit calculator before you commit, not after the last board's down. The carpenters who do this reliably tend to work off a saved template and track each job's real costs against the quote as they go - which is exactly what TrackYaTradie is built for. See how it works when it's built for carpenters.