Builders Quote Template: What to Include

A builder's quote should do three things: state a fixed price for a clearly defined scope, say what is not included, and set out when you get paid. Miss any one of those and you are arguing about money later.

There is a fourth thing most builder quote templates leave out entirely, and it is the one that costs real money: if you agree the job in the customer's home, they have a statutory right to cancel within 14 days — and if your paperwork does not tell them so, that window stretches to a year.

What a Builder's Quote Must Include

Your details

• Business name and trading name
• Business address and contact number
• Company registration number if you trade through a limited company
• VAT registration number if you are VAT-registered

Customer and site details

• Customer name
• The address where the work will be carried out (not always the customer's home address)
• Contact email or phone for acceptance

Quote identity

• A sequential quote number you can reference later
• The date issued
• A validity period — how long the price holds

The work

• A scope description specific enough that both sides would read it the same way in six months
• Labour, broken down by stage or by day rate and days
• Materials, itemised or given as a stated allowance
• Exclusions — what you are not doing
• Any provisional sums, clearly labelled as provisional

Money

• Subtotal, VAT treatment, and total
• Payment schedule: deposit, stage payments, final balance
• What triggers each stage payment

Acceptance and cancellation

• How the customer accepts
• The cancellation notice, if the contract is agreed away from your business premises

Label It "Quotation", Not "Estimate" — and Mean It

A quote is a fixed price. An estimate is a considered guess. Customers use the words interchangeably; the law does not, and neither should your template.

If you label a document "Quotation" and the customer accepts it, you have agreed that price for that scope. Discovering mid-job that the work is harder than you thought is not, on its own, grounds to charge more. Our guide on whether a builder's quote is legally binding covers where the line actually falls.

The reverse trap is worse. If your paperwork fixes no price at all — a verbal "it'll be about eight grand", or a document that describes the work but never commits to a number — section 51 of the Consumer Rights Act 2015 fills the gap for you. Where a service contract "does not expressly fix a price or other consideration, and does not say how it is to be fixed", the contract "is to be treated as including a term that the consumer must pay a reasonable price for the service".

Reasonable is then decided by reference to the market, after the fact, by someone who is not you. Fixing the price in writing is how you keep that decision.

The 14-Day Cancellation Right Most Builder Templates Miss

This applies to consumer work — homeowners, not commercial clients — and it catches out a lot of builders.

If you and the customer agree the contract somewhere other than your business premises, which for most builders means the customer's kitchen table after a site visit, it is an off-premises contract. Under regulation 29(1) of the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013, "the consumer may cancel a distance or off-premises contract at any time in the cancellation period without giving any reason". For a service contract, regulation 30(2) puts that period at "14 days after the day on which the contract is entered into".

Two consequences follow, and both are expensive if you get them wrong.

First: if you do not tell them about the right, the window does not close. Regulation 31(3) is blunt — where the trader fails to provide the cancellation information, "the cancellation period ends at the end of 12 months after the day on which it would have ended". A customer who falls out with you eight months into a long project can, in those circumstances, still cancel.

Second: you should not start work inside the cancellation period without a written request. Regulation 36(1) says the trader "must not begin the supply of a service before the end of the cancellation period" unless the consumer "has made an express request, and in the case of an off-premises contract, has made the request on a durable medium".

The practical fix is small: a short block on the quote itself, and a request line the customer signs or replies to by email. Something like "This contract is agreed away from our business premises, so you have 14 days from acceptance to cancel. If you want us to start before that period ends, please confirm in writing." That one addition converts a live 12-month exposure into a closed 14-day one.

None of this applies when you are quoting a commercial client or another contractor — those are business-to-business contracts and the consumer regulations do not reach them.

Exclusions: The Section That Protects the Price

A builder's quote without exclusions is an invitation to scope creep. You do not need a page of legal wording — a short, specific list does the work.

Common building exclusions worth stating:

• Asbestos survey, removal, or any work arising from an asbestos find
• Structural issues discovered once fabric is opened up
• Drainage, service diversions, or utility connections not shown on the brief
• Making good decoration beyond the immediate work area
• Building control fees, planning fees, and party wall surveyor costs
• Skip permits and parking suspensions
• Anything requiring specialist certification not listed in the scope

Then one sentence to close it: "This quote covers the works described above only. Any additional works will be quoted separately and agreed in writing before we proceed."

Provisional sums deserve their own treatment. If you have allowed £1,200 for kitchen tiling but the customer has not chosen tiles, say so on the quote — "Provisional sum, £1,200, to be adjusted against actual tile cost on selection" — rather than burying it in a fixed total you will later have to renegotiate.

Validity: Why Building Quotes Should Expire Sooner Than You Think

Materials prices move, and on a building job they move across a lot of line items at once — timber, insulation, plasterboard, aggregates, roofing materials.

Thirty days is the common default and it is reasonable for straightforward work. For anything with a heavy materials component, or where you have priced from a merchant quote that itself expires, 14 to 21 days is safer. State it plainly on the quote: "Valid for 21 days from the date above. Materials subject to price at time of order."

The alternative is a customer accepting a February price in June and expecting you to absorb the difference.

Worked Example: Single-Storey Rear Extension

A quote structured this way tells the customer what they are buying and tells you what you agreed.

Item	Detail	Amount
Groundworks and foundations	Excavation, disposal, concrete foundations to Building Control detail	£8,400
Superstructure	Blockwork, cavity insulation, external facing brick to match	£11,200
Roof structure and covering	Flat roof, firrings, EPDM membrane, edge trims	£6,100
Windows and bifold doors	Provisional sum — to be adjusted on selection	£5,500
First fix M&E	Electrical first fix, plumbing to existing runs	£3,200
Plastering and second fix	Boarding, skim, skirtings, architraves	£4,900
Subtotal		£39,300
VAT at 20%		£7,860
Total		£47,160

Payment schedule: 10% on acceptance, 25% on completion of groundworks, 25% on completion of superstructure, 25% on roof watertight, 15% on practical completion.

Excludes: asbestos, structural steel not shown on the drawings, Building Control fees, decoration beyond making good, drainage diversions.

Provisional sums: windows and bifold doors, £5,500.

Note what the customer can see: which stages exist, what each one costs, what is a firm price and what is not. That is what makes a quote easier to say yes to than a single number with "extension works" written next to it.

The Builder's Quote Checklist

1. Sequential quote number and date
2. Your business details, company number, VAT number if registered
3. Site address, which may differ from the customer's address
4. Scope described specifically enough to be read the same way twice
5. Labour and materials shown separately
6. Provisional sums labelled as provisional
7. Exclusions listed
8. Validity period stated
9. Payment schedule tied to visible stages
10. VAT treatment shown
11. Cancellation notice included for consumer work agreed off-premises
12. Acceptance method stated

From Quote to Invoice Without Retyping It

The quote you spent an hour structuring is also the invoice you will raise in three months, minus the provisional sums and plus whatever variations were agreed. Most builders rebuild that document from scratch in a spreadsheet or an accounting package, which is where line items get dropped and VAT treatment goes astray.

Build one now with the Trade Quote Calculator — materials, labour, day rate, markup and VAT come out as a structured breakdown rather than a lump sum. For the wider process of pricing work and protecting margin, see how to write a job quotation, and for the document that follows it, quote vs invoice explained and the construction invoice template guide.

If you are weighing up whether you need pricing software at all for this, our guide to building estimating software covers where estimating tools help a small builder and where they are more than the job needs.

This is general guidance on quoting practice for UK builders, drawn from the published legislation cited below. It is not legal advice, and consumer contract rules turn on the specific circumstances of each contract. For a live dispute or an unusual contract, consult a solicitor or check the current Citizens Advice guidance.

Sources

• Consumer Rights Act 2015, section 51 — reasonable price to be paid for a service
• Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013, regulation 29 — right to cancel
• Regulation 30 — normal cancellation period
• Regulation 31 — cancellation period extended for breach of information requirement
• Regulation 36 — supply of service in cancellation period