A quote does two jobs at once. It wins the work, and it decides whether that work makes you money. Most tradies obsess over the first job and wing the second, which is how you end up flat out busy and wondering where the profit went.
Here’s a free quote template built for New Zealand trade businesses, followed by the part that matters more: how to price the job properly before you hit send.
Download the free quote template
- Word version (.docx): editable in Microsoft Word, Google Docs and LibreOffice. Replace the [bracketed] placeholders and save a copy per quote.
- PDF version: print it or use it as a reference for what a finished quote should look like.
No sign-up, no email required. It comes pre-filled with a worked deck-build example so you can see how the numbers hang together.
What a professional NZ quote includes
The difference between a quote that protects you and a number in a text message:
- A validity window. “Valid for 30 days” means the price of timber in November is not your problem in February. Without it, an old quote can come back to bite you at last year’s prices.
- What’s included, spelled out. Labour, the materials you’ve listed, cleanup, whatever you’re covering. If you lodge the consent, say so.
- What’s excluded, spelled out. Consent fees, reinstating the garden, removing the old structure. Every dispute you’ve ever had about a job lives in this gap, so close it in writing.
- A variations line. One sentence: any work outside this scope gets quoted and agreed in writing before it’s done. This is the single most profitable sentence in the template. Scope creep eats margins precisely because nobody wrote this down.
- Payment terms. Deposit on acceptance, progress payments on longer jobs, balance on completion. Agreeing this at quote time is easy; raising it after the job is awkward.
- GST shown properly. Quote the subtotal, the GST and the total. Surprising a homeowner with 15% at invoice time is a fight you booked weeks earlier.
- A way to accept. “Reply to this email or sign and return.” A quote someone can accept in ten seconds gets accepted more often.
The usual note: we’re a marketing agency, not lawyers or accountants. This is general information, not legal or financial advice, so check anything load-bearing with your own advisers.
How to set your charge-out rate
The most common pricing mistake in the trades is charging what the tradie down the road charges. His overheads aren’t yours, and neither is his mortgage. Your rate comes out of your own numbers:
- What you need to earn. Say $90,000 a year.
- What the business costs to run. Ute, tools, insurance, phone, software, accountant. Say $25,000. That’s $115,000 to recover.
- Hours you can actually bill. A 40-hour week for 46 weeks is 1,840 hours, but quoting, travel, admin and the odd quiet patch mean most solo tradies bill 60 to 70% of that. Call it 1,200 hours.
- Divide. $115,000 over 1,200 hours is roughly $96 an hour just to break even.
- Add a margin. 15 to 20% on top for profit, risk and the quiet months. That lands you around $110 to $115 an hour, plus GST.
Run your own numbers through those five steps. If the answer is higher than what you’re charging now, that gap is why busy doesn’t feel like profitable. And if a customer says you’re dearer than the next guy: he’s not paying your overheads, and one of you has done this maths.
Price the whole job, not just the obvious bits
The labour and the big materials always make it into the quote. The margin leaks are everything else:
- Materials margin. Charging materials at cost turns you into a free purchasing service. A 10 to 20% handling margin on materials is standard practice: you’re funding the purchase, collecting it, carrying the risk and sorting the returns.
- Travel and delivery runs. Forty minutes each way, every day, for a week is a full billable day.
- Consumables. Blades, fixings, gas, drop cloths. Small per job, real per year.
- Disposal. Skip hire and dump fees on the jobs that need them.
- The awkward tenth hour. If you reckon a job at 8 hours, quote what it takes when something goes sideways, because something usually does.
The template’s line-item layout makes this easy: separate lines for labour, materials and equipment, so nothing rides along unpriced and the customer can see what they’re paying for.
Quotes are won in the follow-up
Here’s the part almost nobody does. You price the job, send it, and wait. The customer meanwhile has three quotes, a busy week and no urgency. The tradie who checks in a few days later, answers the one lingering question and makes saying yes easy is very often the one who gets the job, and it’s frequently not the cheapest quote that wins.
If following up feels like nagging, put it on rails: a short email a few days after the quote, another before the validity window closes. That’s exactly the kind of thing we wire up to run automatically for our clients, every quote, every time, until there’s a yes or a no. It’s a big part of how we help trade businesses win more work without anyone having to remember anything.
Won the job? Turn the quote into an invoice
The quote’s line items become the invoice’s line items, so don’t retype them. We’ve got a matching free NZ invoice template with the same layout, GST handled correctly and its own guide to getting paid faster. Quote, deliver, invoice, all in the same format: it reads as one professional operation, because it is.
Quote template FAQ
Is there a free quote template in Word?
Yes, the download above is a .docx that opens in Word, Google Docs and LibreOffice. Fill in your details once and save it as your master copy.
What’s the best format for a quote?
Send a PDF. It can’t be edited, it looks the same on every device, and it prints cleanly. Keep the editable version for yourself. Same rule as invoices.
How do you write a construction or building quote?
Describe the job in one plain sentence, itemise labour, materials and equipment, show subtotal, GST and total, then state what’s included, what’s excluded, your variations rule and your payment terms, with a validity window. That structure is the whole template above.
Can ChatGPT write my quotes?
It can draft the words, but it doesn’t know your costs, your billable hours or what the job is worth in your region, and that’s the part that decides whether you make money. Use the template for structure, your own numbers for pricing, and AI for tidying up wording if you like.
Should I charge for quotes?
For most residential work, free quotes are the market norm in NZ, and charging will cost you enquiries. The exception is complex jobs that take real design or measure-up time, where a paid detailed quote (often credited back if you win the job) is fair and filters out tyre-kickers. Say which it is up front.
How long should a quote stay valid?
Thirty days is standard. Shorter (14 days) if material prices are moving on you, and say so in the quote: it’s a genuine reason and a gentle nudge to decide.
Is a quote legally binding in NZ?
Generally, a quote is an offer: once the customer accepts it, you’ve usually formed a contract to do that scope for that price, which is exactly why the validity window, the exclusions and the written-variations line above matter so much. An estimate is different: it’s a non-binding ballpark, so label it clearly as one. Quotes also need to be genuine under the Fair Trading Act, so never quote low intending to charge high. For anything big or unusual, run it past your lawyer; this is general information only.
The template sorts the paperwork. If the problem is not enough quote requests coming in to begin with, that’s the part we fix. Get a free game plan: 20 minutes, real numbers for your trade and area, no obligation.