A quote that gets approved

What belongs in one

In the UK a quote has no legally required contents. The invoice that follows it does, and that's the useful place to start: what you get right in the quote, you don't have to correct on the invoice, and you won't be asking the customer for their registered address on the day you want to be paid.

• Your own details. Your business name and an address. If you're a limited company, the full name as it appears on the certificate of incorporation; if you're a sole trader trading under a business name, an address where legal documents can be served on you.
• The customer's details, with the name of whoever decides — not whoever filled in the enquiry form.
• A description of the work, concrete enough that in three months you both still understand the same thing by it.
• The price, with VAT shown separately or explicitly excluded. See the next section.
• The terms that apply, including your payment terms — on the quote, not only in terms and conditions nobody reads.
• The validity period.
• How they approve it.

The VAT mistake almost every new business makes

You must register for VAT once your taxable turnover goes over £90,000 in any rolling twelve months, or if you expect to pass it in the next thirty days. Below that, registering is optional.

Which means a quote can be wrong in two directions, and both are embarrassing. If you aren't registered, you must not add VAT and you have no VAT number to show. If you are registered, your price needs to say clearly whether it includes VAT or not — "£2,000" to a business customer usually reads as excluding, and to a private customer as including, and that gap is twenty per cent of the job.

So write it out. "£2,000 plus VAT at 20%" or "£2,000 — no VAT applies, we are not VAT registered". The second sentence looks like an admission and is the opposite: it answers the question before the customer's bookkeeper asks it.

The two that are most often missing

Those are the last two on the list, and they're precisely the two that do the most work.

The validity period gives you a natural reason to come back. "Your quote runs out Friday — shall I extend it?" is a question nobody minds, and it often produces an answer at last. Without an end date all you have is "have you decided yet?", and that puts the work on them.

The approval route removes the final barrier. One sentence will do: *"Happy with this? Reply to this email with 'approved' and we'll get the start date in the diary."* Without that sentence the customer has to work out for themselves what to do next, and that costs exactly enough energy to put it off.

Where the price goes

Not right at the back. The reader scrolls straight to it anyway, and if they have to go through four pages to get there they won't read the rest — by then they're thinking about the figure.

What works: a short summary at the top with what you're going to do and what it costs, and the detail after it. Then someone in a hurry reads the first part, and someone who wants the detail carries on.

Put in why the figure is what it is as well. Not as a defence, but as an explanation: what's included, what isn't, and what happens if the work overruns. A price with no explanation is just a number to compare.

How long to make it valid

Two to four weeks suits most small-business sales. Shorter feels like pressure; longer removes the reason to do anything with it.

Pick a period that fits how the customer decides. If it has to go past a board meeting that happens once a month, two weeks is awkward — and you'll only hear that if you ask before you write the quote.

What to record when you send it

At the moment the quote goes out: the amount, the validity date, and when you'll ring. Those three, and a task with a date on it.

That's the piece of work finished. What happens after that — and that's where most of the revenue disappears — is in the piece on following up a quote.