How to write a quote for a job: the 8 lines, with 3 filled examples

What should a quote for a job include?

A quote for a job needs eight lines: scope of work, what is not included, materials, labor, the total price, a validity date, payment terms and the deposit. Everything else on the templates (your logo, a quote number, the client's address) is filing; the eight lines are the contract. I read the nine guides on page one of Google for this query on 27 September 2026. All nine tell you to date the quote and to split materials from labor, six mention a deposit, three show a filled quote, and one, Arrivy's, tells you to write down what is not included.

The exclusions line is where the money is. Citizens Advice tells UK customers that "After you say yes to a quote, it's a binding agreement between you and the trader, whether it's written down or not", and that the trader can charge more only if the customer asks for extra work, agrees to extra work the trader has flagged, or the price was a genuine mistake. A corroded drain line you never priced is extra work only if the quote says it was not included. Written down, it is a second job; left off, it is your problem.

What is the difference between a quote, an estimate and an invoice?

A quote is a fixed price the customer can hold you to once they accept it, an estimate is a best guess that can move, and an invoice is the request for payment after the work is done. The table is the UK version, where a consumer advice body and the government both put the rules in writing; the US has no federal definition of a quote, and California's contractor rules below are the closest thing.

So write "quote" on a document only when you have seen the job. Business.gov.au says the same thing in its quoting guide: "If a customer accepts your quote, it becomes a legally binding contract." If you have not been on site, the document is an estimate; say so at the top, and say what would change the number. The invoice comes later and has its own rules, which how to ask for payment politely covers from the day it falls due.

How do you write a quote for a plumbing job from a voice note?

Dictate the notes in the van, paste the transcript into a chat model with the prompt below, and check the arithmetic and the exclusions line before you send it. I ran the prompt once, on 27 September 2026, on GPT-5.6 Luna (the GPT model on Whizi's cheapest plan, called ChatGPT Luna in the picker), through OpenRouter. The run used 659 tokens and cost $0.0005.

The prompt: "I am a licensed plumber in Columbus, Ohio. Below is the transcript of a voice note I recorded after a site visit. Turn it into a customer quote with exactly these eight lines, in this order: Scope of work, Not included, Materials, Labor, Price, Valid until, Payment terms, Deposit. Use only the figures in the transcript. If a figure is missing, write [fill in] instead of inventing one. Plain words, no adjectives, no sales language, under 180 words. Today is 27 September 2026."

The transcript I pasted under it: "Right, so that's the Hendersons at 42 Maple, the kitchen. Replace the leaking P-trap under the sink and both shutoff valves, they're seized. They also want the outside hose bib swapped for a frost-free one. Parts, call it 85 for the valves and the trap, the frost-free sillcock is about 40. Labor three hours at 110. I can't do anything about the corroded drain line inside the wall, that's a separate job, tell them that. Thirty days on the quote. They pay when it's done, card or Zelle. No deposit on a job this size."

What GPT-5.6 Luna returned, unedited, 58 words:

Two things to check before it goes out. The arithmetic: $85 plus $40 plus $330 is $455, which it got right, and it turned "thirty days" into a date. The exclusions: the transcript said the corroded drain line "is a separate job, tell them that", and the model cut that to "Drain line inside wall", which drops the words the customer needs to hear. Rewrite it by hand as "Corroded drain line inside the wall, quoted separately". Tax is missing too, because the transcript never mentioned it; add the line where your state or country charges it. And keep your prices in the transcript. A model asked to price a job produces a number that looks like a price, and it has never seen your supplier's invoice.

The prompt runs the same in ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or Whizi, where Starter carries GPT and Claude Haiku and the phone keyboard's microphone does the dictating. Whizi loses to Jobber, ServiceM8 and the other field-service suites on the next step: it does not send the quote, log the acceptance or turn it into an invoice, so the eight lines still go into whatever you bill from. AI for plumbers and electricians has the six prompts that come after the quote, from the running-late text to the review reply.

How do you write a quote for a painting job or a cleaning job?

The same eight lines, with the scope line doing more of the work: a painting quote names the rooms, the coats and who moves the furniture, and a cleaning quote names the frequency and the per-visit price. Both examples below are templates I wrote, not model output; the numbers are placeholders for yours.

The cleaning quote is the odd one out because it is a recurring price, so the validity line does two jobs: how long the offer stands, and how long the rate stands once accepted. Put the review period in writing or the customer will read the first price as permanent. The painting quote's deposit is 10% for a reason that the next section explains.

How long should a quote be valid for, and how much deposit can you ask for?

Thirty days is the norm for a validity date, and a deposit is capped by law in some places and by custom in others. Jobber's guide says "Most service businesses set quotes to expire 30 days after being issued", Arrivy says 15 to 30 days, Tradify says 14 to 30, and Fergus's electrician example uses 14. Nobody on page one goes past 30, because the price of copper moves inside a month.

On the deposit, California is the strictest place I could find a rule written down. The Contractors State License Board says a home improvement down payment "cannot be more than $1,000 or 10 percent of the contract price, whichever is less", and that later payments "cannot exceed the value of the work performed", as of September 2026. The $175 on the painting quote above is legal there; the 50% deposit that three page-one guides use as their example is not. The UK has no cap, but Citizens Advice tells customers to "push it down as much as possible, and don't agree to more than 25%", so a UK painter asking for half up front is asking for the one thing the customer has been told to refuse.

Payment terms are the line that decides when you get paid, and leaving it blank hands the decision to the law of wherever you are. In the UK, gov.uk says that if you do not agree a payment date, "the law says the payment is late 30 days after" the customer gets the invoice or you provide the service, and from that day a business customer owes statutory interest at 8% plus the Bank of England base rate, plus a fixed recovery fee of £40, £70 or £100 by debt size, as of September 2026. In the US the Prompt Payment Act was passed "to require Federal agencies to pay their bills on a timely basis" and covers federal contracts, nothing private, so for a private customer the term you write is the only term you have. Write "due on completion" or "due 14 days after the invoice date", name the method, and the reminder sequence writes itself.

The rule for the whole page: if you have not seen the job, it is an estimate; if the customer could reasonably assume something is included and it is not, it goes on the exclusions line; and a quote with no validity date is a price you have offered forever.