Entrepreneurs – Writing Your First Quotation And Not Sure What Goes Into It?

You’ve got your new business up and running, you’ve done a bit of marketing and got your advert in the yellow pages.  Now you’ve got your first request for a quotation for a large job – so exactly what does a quotation look like?

First of all congratulations your hard work is starting to pay off.  Start nu ensuring that you have some headed paper with your logo and contact details on it.  Your quotation should be quite short about 2 – 4 pages long and should consist of the following:

-        Situation: Your understanding of the situation, current problem to be solved or work to be undertaken.  This can range from one sentence such as “Paint the entire outside of the house at 123 Your Road, Sometown” to several paragraphs that outline the situation.

-        Your Company: An overview of how your company is the best to solve the situation.  Again this can be from one sentence to a couple of paragraphs depending on the type of quotation.

-        Your Product or Services: Now we come to the meat of the quote.  Here you detail what your products and services are.  Use bulleted format wherever possible.  Be specific and ensure that you include everything requested or that will solve the problem.  Include numbers of products and times for your services as well as the end deliverables that you will produce. Ensure that any timeframes are very exact as well as descriptions of your end products.  This can be as simple as “paint all ways in marigold yellow” or as complex as “produce a 30-35 page report on the profitability of your company after 20 days of business analysis.”  If you are able to offer extras – here is where you put them – but ensure that you detail that they are extras.  At the end put the total price.  Put a separate price for the extras so that it is clear that they are extra!

-        Responsibilities: Ensure that you detail who supplies what, when you will be doing the work, who is in charge on site etc.

-        Validity: Give a time period that a quotation is valid. This ensures that you don’t lose out if prices go up over time and that your staff are available when the work is required.  It also allows you to fit your work into your schedule of work.

-        Payment Terms:  You should detail when you expect to be paid and how – such as “30 days after presentation of invoice” or “on presentation of document X”.

-        Terms and Conditions: This should be a standard form that sets out your terms and conditions under which you are working.  You should take legal advice on this.

Good luck.