A quote is a firm price for a defined list of items, good for a stated period. An estimate is an approximate, non-final number that may change as the job takes shape. When a remodeler texts you a takeoff for a 12x16 deck and you send back one number with a date on it, that's a quote. When a homeowner asks what a kitchen repaint might run and you say "somewhere in the $400 to $600 range for paint and sundries, depending on what we find," that's an estimate. Both have their place, and mixing them up is how you end up honoring April lumber prices in June.
Quote vs estimate at the counter
The practical difference at your counter is commitment. You can stand behind a quote because you priced every line against real costs and put a fence around it with a valid-through date. An estimate buys room to revise once you've walked the job or confirmed the special-order pricing with your vendor. The legal weight of a written quote depends on its terms and on your state or province, so this is general practice, not legal advice. The habit that protects you either way is putting the validity date and the "prices subject to change after" language on every quote you send.
How to write a quote
Here's the sequence most contractor desks settle into, whether they're quoting a deck package, a barn repaint, or a pallet of feed for a fencing crew:
- Get the job defined in writing. A takeoff, a materials list, a set of plans, or even a clear text message. If the customer can't tell you what they want, you're writing an estimate, not a quote, and you should label it that way.
- Price every line against your current cost. Check the lines where cost has moved lately before you quote from memory. Your contractor pricing tiers should already live in your system so the right price level applies automatically, and if you're still managing that on a spreadsheet, our guide to customer price levels and contractor pricing walks through setting it up.
- Check availability on every line. What's on hand, what's committed to another will call, what's on order, and what's a special order with a lead time. Mark the special-order lines clearly on the quote.
- Write the quote with a number, a date, and a valid-through date. Sequential quote numbers save you when a contractor calls three weeks later and says "the deck quote." The Johnson deck quote, dated April 3, good through April 17, is a conversation. "The deck quote" is a scavenger hunt.
- Add the terms. Delivery, tax, deposit requirements on special orders, and what happens if material prices move after the valid-through date.
- Send it and log it as open. An open quote you never follow up on is a favor you did for the yard down the road.
- When they say go, turn the accepted quote into the sale. Same lines, same prices, no re-keying. A quote becomes a sale when the customer accepts it, and the fewer times a human retypes those numbers, the fewer typos end up on an invoice.
What goes on the quote
A quote that a contractor can hand to their own customer, or file against a job, needs all of this on one page:
- Customer name and job name or PO. Contractors run several jobs at once, and "the Harrison job" is how everyone will refer to this material forever. If the contractor uses a PO string to mark which job a purchase belongs to, capture it now so it lands on the invoice later.
- Quote number and date. Sequential numbers, always.
- Valid-through date. More on choosing it below, but never leave it off.
- Line items with quantity, unit of measure, unit price, and extended price. This is where units trip people up. You buy that coil of joist hanger strap by the roll and sell it by the foot, you price lumber by the piece but think in board feet, and screws come by the box but get used by the handful. Every line should state the unit the customer is buying, and if your system fights you on that, our guide to units of measure: buy by the roll, sell by the foot is worth a read.
- Special-order lines marked with lead time. A special order is something you never stock, ordered on the customer's behalf. That's different from a stock item that happens to be out, and the distinction matters a lot when you're setting expectations, as we get into in backorder vs special order.
- Delivery. Charge it as its own line so it doesn't quietly erode the margin on the material. There's a full treatment in our guide to delivery fees and fuel surcharges.
- Tax. Show it so nobody's surprised at the register.
- Deposit terms. What you need collected before you place any special orders.
- The price-movement clause. One plain sentence: "Prices firm through the valid-through date above; after that, lines reprice at current cost."
An estimate template you can copy
For the looser document, the one you send when the job isn't fully defined, this layout keeps you honest and keeps the customer from treating your ballpark as a promise:
| Field | Example |
|---|---|
| Document label | ESTIMATE (not a firm quote) |
| Estimate number and date | EST-1042, March 26 |
| Customer and job name | Dale Henderson, Henderson fence repair |
| Line items (qty, unit, est. unit price, est. extended) | 40 pc 1x6x6 cedar pickets @ $3.10 est. = $124.00 est. |
| Assumptions | Assumes 200 linear feet, no gate hardware, customer picks up |
| Range or contingency | Total likely $380 to $440 depending on final footage |
| Valid-through | Pricing review after April 9 |
| Next step | Confirm final list and we'll issue a firm quote |
The word "estimate" at the top and the assumptions block do the heavy lifting. When the customer accepts the scope, you reissue the same lines as a firm quote with hard prices and a valid-through date.
A worked example: quoting a 12x16 deck
A builder hands your counter a takeoff for a small pressure-treated deck with a composite railing you've never stocked. Here's the quote, dated April 3 and good through April 17:
| # | Item | Qty | Unit | Unit price | Extended |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2x8x12 PT joist | 18 | pc | $11.50 | $207.00 |
| 2 | 5/4x6x12 PT deck board | 34 | pc | $7.25 | $246.50 |
| 3 | 4x4x8 PT post | 6 | pc | $9.80 | $58.80 |
| 4 | Joist hanger, 2x8 | 36 | pc | $1.45 | $52.20 |
| 5 | Deck screws, 5 lb box | 3 | box | $32.00 | $96.00 |
| 6 | Composite railing kit (special order, 2-week lead) | 4 | kit | $189.00 | $756.00 |
| 7 | Delivery | 1 | ea | $65.00 | $65.00 |
Subtotal: $207.00 + $246.50 + $58.80 + $52.20 + $96.00 + $756.00 + $65.00 = $1,481.50
Tax at 6%, in a state that taxes delivery on a taxable sale: $1,481.50 × 0.06 = $88.89
Quote total: $1,570.39
Deposit due before placing the special order: 50% of line 6 = $378.00
Two things to notice. The special-order railing is called out with its lead time right on the line, so nobody plans a deck party for next Saturday. And the delivery is its own line at $65, which keeps the material pricing clean and gives the customer something to remove if they'd rather send a truck. A quote you can't stand behind is a misquote, and this one you can stand behind, because every number ties to a cost you checked this week.
How long should a quote be good for
As short as you can defend, and no shorter than the customer needs to get an answer. When cost on a commodity line like lumber or plywood is moving, give those lines a short window, a week or two, while steadier lines like hardware, paint, and fasteners can carry a longer one, such as 30 days. There is no single right number, because it depends on what you sell and how fast your costs move, but the principle holds: the valid-through date should match how long you are willing to absorb a cost increase.
Two habits make the window work. First, re-confirm pricing with your vendor before you place any special-order line, even inside the window, because a firm quote to your customer plus a surprise price jump from your vendor means you absorb the difference. Second, treat the valid-through date as a follow-up trigger rather than an expiration you hope nobody notices. A call on day twelve ("your deck quote expires Friday, want me to get that railing on order?") wins jobs that silence loses.
Taking a deposit on special-order lines
When you special-order a composite railing, a door unit, or a particular shingle color for a job, you're buying something you'll never stock and may struggle to return. A deposit shifts that risk to where it belongs. Set the deposit as a percentage of the special-order lines (half is a round number many desks start from), collected before you send the purchase order to your vendor, with the balance on the rest of the material due at pickup, delivery, or on the customer's charge account if they have terms with you.
Put the deposit terms on the quote itself so the conversation happens before acceptance, not after. If the contractor buys on a house account, the deposit and the balance can ride the monthly statement the same as any other charge, and our guide to contractor charge accounts covers setting those terms up so the desk isn't improvising credit policy at 7 a.m. on a Saturday.
Following up and turning the quote into the sale
Open quotes are a pipeline, and pipelines need a weekly walk-through. Pull your list of open quotes every week, sort by valid-through date, and work it: the ones expiring soonest get a call, the ones a few weeks old get a "did the job go?" check-in, and the dead ones get closed out so your numbers stay honest. Contractors expect the call. Half the time the answer is "oh, right, go ahead," and the quote does its job a week after you wrote it.
When the customer accepts, the quote becomes the sale, and this is the moment where stores lose accuracy for no good reason. If your counter staff retypes an accepted quote into a new ticket, every line is a chance to fat-finger a quantity or pull the wrong price level. The accepted quote should convert directly, keeping the job name, the PO, the deposit already collected, and the special-order lines intact, so the invoice matches what the customer agreed to.
Tracking your quote-to-sale rate
Quote-to-sale rate is the counter metric that tells you whether your quoting is working: of the quotes you sent in a period, how many became sales. The math is division. If your desk sent 40 quotes last month and 22 turned into sales, that's 22 divided by 40, a 55% quote-to-sale rate.
Track it monthly and read it alongside inventory turns, because the two tell a story together. A falling rate with steady turns can mean your prices are getting beaten on commodity lines, and a rate that climbs while follow-up stays sloppy can mean the desk is underpricing and leaving margin on the table. You don't need a league average to compare against; you need your own trend line and the honesty to look at it.
How Rundoo handles quotes
In the Rundoo web POS, quotes live in the same flow as a regular sale, alongside held drafts, will calls, and special orders, so an accepted quote converts without retyping. For lumber and building materials, the quote starts where your takeoff ends (Rundoo doesn't do the takeoff): you build it from your takeoff grouped by area, phase, or trade with Item Sets, put every line in its own unit with mixed lengths on one line using Tally Products, and keep special-order windows, doors, and millwork on the same sales order as the stock material. From there you can turn one quote into one sale or several, collect deposits along the way, ship in stages, and invoice as the work progresses, with the job and balance on every sale.
Daniel Bernat, owner of Blue Spruce Building Materials in Lake City, Colorado, put it plainly: "I love it that I can quote it, then they will say, go ahead and I will just turn in the special order." If you run a lumber yard and want to see that flow, there's more on our lumber and building materials page.
