Underpriced quotes, no margin for indirect costs, travel time you don't bill. Five common pitfalls in renovation quoting and concrete ways to avoid them.
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The quote is the most important document you send a client. One slip and you work three months for free, and they still hold money back for snags. Below are the five most common pitfalls contractors fall into, and how to avoid each one in practice.
Mistake #1: Pricing off the top of your head, no template
Fifteen years on the tools, you remember everything. The quote goes out by email in 20 minutes because "you know what it costs".
The problem: you always miss 2–3 line items. Silicone, trim profiles, ripping out the old immersion. Every missed item is €50–200 out of your pocket.
Fix: build the catalogue once and use it on every quote. Run a checklist through every category (strip-out, first-fix, finishes, second-fix, sundries). It takes 30 seconds longer. It saves €100+ per quote.
Mistake #2: Indirect costs forgotten
A typical example:
- Materials: €4,500.
- Labour: €5,500.
- Final quote to the client: €10,000.
What got forgotten:
- Skip hire (container + delivery): €300.
- Travel for a four-person crew (20 days): €400 of fuel.
- Sundries (tape, dust sheets, floor protection, bin bags): €200.
- Consumables (diamond blades, drill bits, sandpaper): €100.
Total: €1,000 out of your own pocket. The full 10% margin you were counting on has just vanished.
Fix: add indirect costs as a separate line item (5–8% of materials and labour). The client sees a "site overheads" line and doesn't argue, because every trade has it.
Mistake #3: Travel time not billed
Job is 40 km from your yard. Four-person crew. 15 working days.
- 30 min travel × 2 (there and back) × 4 people × 15 days = 60 man-hours lost.
- At €25/hour, that's €1,500 unaccounted for in the quote.
Fix: for jobs more than 15 km away, add a "travel" line. Or bump the hourly rate by 15–20%. Plenty of Dublin contractors driving out to the M50 commuter belt don't, and then wonder why their margins are flat.
Mistake #4: Saying yes to changes without updating the quote
Client: "While you're stripping the tiles, could you drill the hole through for the air-con? It's not going to add much, is it?"
"Probably not, I'll do it while I'm here."
Cost while you're here: 1.5 hours of work plus a drill bit and the clean-up. €150.
You'll get 5–8 of these on a single job. €1,000 of free work for the client.
Fix: every change to scope means a written variation with a separate price, signed before you start. Even €120 for one hole. The client learns that "while you're here" isn't a thing, and that's a good thing. Good clients respect it.
Mistake #5: No stage-payment terms
The "we do everything, the client pays at the end" model is asking for trouble. Three real-world scenarios:
- The client loses their job mid-renovation and has nothing to pay you with.
- The client finds a "snag" and withholds 30% of the invoice until it's fixed.
- The client disappears after sign-off, and your 14-day invoice runs out.
Fix: agree stage payments up front, no matter how nice the client is:
- 30% deposit before start.
- 40% at the key milestone (e.g. after first-fix, before finishes).
- 30% on final sign-off.
The deposit funds materials. The middle stage covers labour for half the job. The final stage is small enough that a client trying to take you for a ride loses more than they save.
How to avoid all five at once
Each of these mistakes has the same root cause: quoting done on the fly, with no process. An organised approach knocks all five out:
- A service catalogue means nothing gets forgotten (Mistake #1).
- An automatic overhead markup keeps indirect costs in every quote (Mistake #2).
- A "travel" line in the catalogue keeps the quote fair (Mistake #3).
- One-click variations stop the client getting used to changes being free (Mistake #4).
- A contract template with stage payments keeps payment terms consistent (Mistake #5).
Bulido covers all five, with the bonus of having it in one tool instead of five tabs.