Should You Charge for Quotes? How to Decide, Trade by Trade

Free quoting is the default across most Australian trades, and for a lot of work it should stay that way. But there is a point where free quoting stops being marketing and starts being unpaid labour. Usually it is the point where you have driven forty minutes each way, spent an hour under a house working out where the water is coming from, written it up that night, and never heard back. Deciding when to charge for that is one of the quieter decisions that separates a busy business from a profitable one.

Work out what a quote actually costs you

Before you decide anything, put a number on a site visit. Count travel time both ways, time on site, the time you spend writing it up afterwards, and fuel. Then look at how many quotes you do in a typical week and how many turn into work.

Most owners are surprised by the arithmetic. If you quote ten jobs a week and win three, the seven you lost still cost you real hours. Those hours are not free. They are being paid for by the customers who do book you, through the margin on their jobs. Once you see it that way, charging is not about being difficult. It is about deciding who carries the cost.

The jobs where free quoting still makes sense

Charging for everything is the wrong answer. Free quotes are doing a job when the visit is short, the work is easy to price, and your conversion rate is healthy. Keep them free for:

• Standard, repeatable work you can price from photos or a short phone call
• Jobs close to home where travel is minimal
• Repeat customers and referrals, who convert at a much higher rate than cold enquiries
• Anything where producing the quote is a five-minute exercise

If most of your work sits in this list, leave your quoting alone. The problem you have is somewhere else.

The jobs where a fee belongs

A fee earns its place when the quote itself is skilled work rather than a sales call. The clearest cases are:

• Diagnostic work. Finding the leak, tracing the fault, working out why the slab is damp. The answer is the valuable part, and you are handing it over for nothing.
• Design or detailed measure work. Cabinetry, landscaping layouts, complex fitouts, anything where you produce a drawing or a schedule.
• Long travel outside your normal patch, especially rural or interstate callouts.
• Reports for insurers, strata committees or builders, where you are producing a document rather than a price.
• Jobs where the customer has told you outright they are collecting five quotes.

The test is simple. If the customer can walk away holding something useful, such as a diagnosis, a drawing or a report they could hand to another trade, you have done work, not sales.

Setting the number

Keep it small enough to be a filter and large enough to cover the visit. For a straightforward attendance, somewhere between a half hour and an hour of your charge-out rate is the range most trades settle on. For genuine diagnostic work that might take two hours, charge your hourly rate and say so up front, with an estimate of how long you expect to be there.

Resist the urge to set it so low that it does not cover the fuel. A token fee gets you the worst of both worlds: it annoys price shoppers without paying for your time.

How to say it without losing the job

The wording matters more than the amount, and the timing matters more than the wording. Say it on the first call, before anything is booked. Nobody minds a fee they were told about. Everybody minds a fee that appears at the end.

Something like: there is an assessment fee for the visit, which covers me coming out, diagnosing the problem properly and writing up a fixed price for the repair. If you go ahead with the work, I take it off the invoice.

Then stop talking. The pause does more work than any amount of justification. If they push back, you can explain what is included, but do not apologise for it and do not negotiate it on the phone. A customer who will not pay a small fee to have you diagnose their problem is rarely a customer who will pay your invoice without an argument.

Crediting it back

Crediting the fee against the job if the customer proceeds is the compromise that makes this workable for almost everyone. The customer sees it as a deposit rather than a charge. You still get paid for the ones who do not book. And it gives you a clean, honest line to use when you quote: the visit costs this much, and it comes off if we do the work.

Put the credit in writing on the quote itself so there is no argument later about whether it was included.

What changes once you start

Expect fewer enquiries and a higher strike rate. That is the whole point, but it can be unnerving in the first month if you are used to judging the business by how many calls come in. Track bookings and hours instead. Most trades who make this change find they are driving less, quoting less and earning the same or more.

You will also notice the tone of the conversations changes. A customer who has paid for your time tends to treat it as valuable, turn up to the appointment and answer the phone afterwards.

The short version

• Cost out a site visit before you decide anything
• Keep quotes free for short, local, easy-to-price work and for referrals
• Charge where the quote involves diagnosis, design, long travel or a written report
• Set the fee at roughly half an hour to an hour of your charge-out rate
• Tell the customer on the first call, plainly, and credit it back if they proceed
• Judge the change by bookings and hours, not by enquiry volume

Frequently Asked Questions

Will charging for quotes cost me work?

It will cost you some enquiries, and most of those are the ones that were never going to book. The jobs you lose are usually price shoppers collecting free opinions. Watch your booked jobs and your hours rather than your enquiry count, and judge it after a couple of months rather than a couple of weeks.

What if my competitors all quote for free?

Plenty do, and that is fine for simple, quick-to-price work. Where you are doing diagnosis or design, the fee is what lets you spend proper time on site instead of guessing. Explain what the customer gets for it. If you also credit it back against the job, you are rarely the expensive option in practice.

Should I charge for quotes on emergency callouts?

Emergency work is usually already priced as a callout with an hourly rate, so a separate quoting fee is unnecessary. The important thing is that the callout rate is clearly stated when the customer rings, along with what it covers and when after-hours rates start.