KNOW THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN QUOTES vs ESTIMATES?

QUOTES ARE NOT ESTIMATES!  YOU LOSE MONEY ON ESTIMATES!

It really drives me crazy sometimes when I hear "professionals" treat quotes like estimates or vice-versa; so much so, I decided to write about it.

What is a QUOTE?

A quote is a "fixed" price contract.  This essentially means, you can write me a check for the amount of my quote before I start the job.  Once the job is completed, you could give me the check without having to re-write it.

If I give you a quote, I take ALL the risk if something goes wrong during the scope of work as stated in the quote.  Sometimes, there may be clauses to mitigate certain risks.  For instance, I might put things in the quote like "not liable for damage to sprinkler heads".  Quotes can be high risk for certain kinds of jobs.

So what's an ESTIMATE?

An estimate is a flexible price.  It's purely a guess at the costs a project entails and ultimately you could pay more or less than an estimate when the job is completed.  One major thing to note, there's absolutely nothing to fall back on to determine what's actually going to be charged.  Some might say "customer service" is the only thing that you as a client has as leverage.  Quite often estimates create conflict between contractors and homeowners who use the terms quotes and estimates interchangeably.

In Summary:

Complicated, unpredictable jobs should never use estimates or quotes for the contract. (There are other more appropriate contracts out there).

Jobs like a framing a deck or doing a foundation are jobs that can be quoted as there are specs/drawings that show all the necessary information.

Estimates should never be used for "the contract" but instead for determining a "budget" where your actual contract should be "time & materials" or a "mark up".

Cheers!

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