The checklist at a glance
Every complete estimate has the same skeleton, no matter the trade. Use this as your checklist before anything goes out the door:
| Item | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Your business name and contact details | The customer needs to know who this is and how to reach you |
| Customer name and job address | Ties the price to a specific person and place |
| Date and estimate number | Keeps your records straight and anchors the validity period |
| Scope of work | One or two sentences describing the job in plain language |
| Itemized line items | Shows what the customer is paying for, line by line |
| Subtotal, tax, and total | The numbers, separated so tax is clearly not your markup |
| Terms | Validity date, exclusions, deposit, and payment expectations |
Business and customer details
Start the document with your business name, phone, and email, plus whatever license or registration numbers are normal in your trade and area. This is not decoration: it is how the customer checks that you are real, and how they reach you to say yes.
Then the customer's name and the job site address, which matters when their billing address differs from where the work happens. Add the date and an estimate number. Numbering sounds like bureaucracy until the day a customer calls about 'that estimate from spring' and you can pull it up in seconds.
Scope of work and line items
Write a short scope summary in plain language before the numbers: what you will do, in the order you will do it. This is the paragraph the customer reads to confirm you understood the job, and it is what they compare against competing estimates.
Then itemize. Separate materials from labor, give each line a description a non-contractor understands, and include quantities where they help. Itemizing is the difference between an estimate a customer can evaluate and a number they have to take on faith. Estimate example shows what finished line items look like, and free estimate template gives you a structure to copy.
If a line item would make a customer ask 'what is that for?', rewrite it. Confusion on paper becomes hesitation, and hesitation becomes silence.
Totals and tax
Show a subtotal, then tax as its own line, then the grand total. Separating tax matters because rules vary by state and sometimes by whether the charge is materials or labor, and the customer should see that part of the total is the government's, not yours.
If parts of the price are uncertain, like materials the customer has not chosen yet, list them as allowances and label them clearly. An allowance with a label is professional; a quiet guess buried in the total is a future argument.
Terms: the part people skip
Terms are short lines that save long conversations. State how long the estimate is valid, since prices and schedules move; many contractors set somewhere in the 15 to 30 day range. How long is an estimate good for explains how to pick yours.
List exclusions: what your price does not cover. Note any deposit required to schedule the work and how the rest gets paid. If you offer a warranty on workmanship, say so. None of this needs legal language. Plain sentences work, and plain sentences get read.
Common things people forget
The estimate that loses a job is rarely wrong on price. It is usually missing something small that made the customer hesitate:
- No validity date, so the customer sits on it indefinitely
- No exclusions, so the customer assumes everything is included
- Tax folded silently into the total, making your price look higher than it is
- No estimate number, so follow-ups reference nothing
- No payment terms, so the deposit conversation happens awkwardly later
- Vague line items that force the customer to guess what they are buying
Putting it together
If you want the writing process behind this checklist, how to write an estimate walks through it end to end. EstimateBook drafts all of these sections from a voice, text, or photo description on iOS and Android, and you review every line before the PDF goes out.