Quotes and estimates review for quote templates

Three prices arrive for what you believe is the same job. They differ by a lot. Nothing on any of the three documents tells you why, because each supplier has scoped the work slightly differently and none of them has told you where.

This quotes and estimates review shows how to compare supplier prices and audit your own quotes after the fact. It also gives you a fill-in quote template to make future quotes clearer and more consistent.

What to take away

Making three quotes comparable

The work is dull and it is the whole job. Build one sheet with the suppliers across the top and every element of the work down the side, taken from the most detailed of the three quotes.

                             Supplier A   Supplier B   Supplier C
[Element of work]            included     included     not shown
[Element of work]            included     excluded     included
[Materials: whose?]          theirs       yours        theirs
[Disposal / making good]     included     not shown    excluded
[Access assumptions]         states       silent       states
[Warranty or rework period]  states       silent       states
[What triggers an extra]     stated       silent       stated
[Validity]                   [date]       none         [date]
Price                        ____         ____         ____

Two columns matter more than the price row. "Not shown" is different from "excluded": one supplier has thought about it and left it out, the other has not thought about it, and you will discover which on site. And a silent column anywhere means you do not yet have a comparable price, you have a number.

Use the same plain-language labels on your comparison sheet. If suppliers use different terms, write down what each one means before deciding whether the scopes match.

Go back to each supplier with the specific gaps, not with the other quotes. Asking a supplier to explain a difference against a competitor's number invites a stripped-down revision, not an honest one.

What a low price is usually telling you

A low price does not always mean the supplier is cheaper. Check whether the difference comes from one or more of these scope or terms gaps:

The way to tell them apart is to ask each supplier the same question: what would make this cost more than you have quoted? A supplier who has thought about the job answers immediately and specifically. A supplier who has not says it should be fine.

Reading the document itself

Beyond the price, the quote tells you what the supplier will be like to work with. Use the same fields in your review sheet each time:

| Document field | What to check |

| Scope and inclusions | Does the document describe the same work as your brief? | | Exclusions | What work or materials are left out? | | Assumptions and extras | What could change the total, and how will the supplier handle it? | | Dates and validity | When was the quote issued, and how long does the stated price hold? | | Payment and warranty | What payment terms and rework or warranty terms are written down? |

None of these is a reason to reject a supplier on its own. Together they tell you where the friction will be.

A fill-in quote and estimate template

Use this as a starting point. Fill in the relevant fields, define the scope and terms, and remove anything that does not apply.

QUOTE / ESTIMATE
Quote date:
Prepared by (business and contact):
Prepared for:
Work and scope:
Included:
Excluded:
Assumptions:
Materials supplied by:
Access, disposal, and making good:
Possible extras and what triggers them:
Warranty or rework period:
Price:
Payment schedule:
Valid through:
Customer approval:

Questions worth asking before you accept

Write the answers down and confirm them in a short note. An answer given on the phone and never written down is an answer that will be remembered differently. This is exactly the situation the business letters approach is built for: a two sentence message confirming what was said, sent the same day.

Reviewing your own quotes, after the fact

The other half of review, and the half almost nobody does. Once a quarter, pull every quote you issued in the period and record five fields for each one: quote date; quoted total; outcome (won, lost, or no response); actual job cost if won and completed; and the known reason for the outcome.

Then look for four things.

A win rate that is very high. Suspicious rather than good. If almost everyone accepts, your prices are probably below what the market would pay, and you are working harder than you need to for the same money.

A win rate that is very low. Either you are quoting the wrong enquiries or your document is losing work your price should win. The declines that never get answered at all usually point at the enquiry, not the price.

A gap between quoted and actual cost. Consistently over on the same kind of job means your build up has a missing line. Find it once and every future quote improves.

A pattern in response time. Compare the win rate on quotes sent within a day against those sent after a week. In most businesses this is the largest single lever available, and it costs nothing except a decision to answer faster.

None of this needs software. It needs the numbers written down somewhere they survive, which for most businesses means the same place the job costs are recorded rather than a spreadsheet that lives on one person's machine.

Turning a review into a change

A review that produces observations changes nothing. Pick one thing per quarter.

If the gap between quoted and actual is the problem, change the build up. If the win rate on slow quotes is the problem, change what has to happen before a quote can go out and make the fast path the default.

If the same argument keeps arriving after acceptance, fix it with a clause in the standard document, not better intentions. For example: “Work outside the scope and inclusions above requires written approval of the added work and price before it begins.” Put a clause like this in the quotes and estimates skeleton you work from every time.

Then leave it for a quarter and look again. Anything you change more often than that, you cannot measure.

Common questions