An estimate has a harder job than a quote. It has to be specific enough to be believed and honest enough about its own uncertainty to survive being wrong. Most estimates fail on the second one.
Use a range, and make it narrow at the bottom
A single number on an estimate will be remembered as a price. A range says what it is. But the range has to be defensible: $4,200 to $5,400 reads as considered. $3,000 to $9,000 reads as “I have not looked at this”.
A useful rule: the spread should be roughly the size of the unknown, not the size of your nerves. If the only variable is 60 square feet of possible subfloor work at $11, the spread is about $700, and the range should be about $700 wide.
Write the assumptions down
This is the part that converts an estimate into a signed job, because it is the part that shows your work. Four or five lines, each one a thing you assumed that could turn out otherwise.
Each line is doing two jobs: it protects your number, and it tells the client which of these they control. “Rooms empty before the crew arrives” has moved more furniture than any amount of asking on the day.
Say what would move the number
One sentence per variable, with the direction and roughly the size. “If the subfloor needs replacing it is about $11 a square foot; we saw one soft spot of roughly 60 square feet.”
Clients are far more tolerant of a number that moves in a way they were warned about than of a smaller number that surprises them. The warning is worth more than the accuracy.
Date it, expire it, and follow up on the expiry
Thirty days, stated on the document. Material prices move and your calendar fills, and an estimate with no expiry is an open offer you have forgotten about.
It also gives you the least awkward follow-up in the trade: not “just checking in”, but “this expires Friday — do you want me to hold the pricing or re-price it?” That question gets answered. The other one does not.
Convert it, do not rewrite it
When the unknown resolves — you have seen the subfloor, the client picked the finish — the estimate should become a quote carrying the same scope, the same client and the same line items, with the range collapsed to a number.
Rewriting it from scratch is where the errors get in: a rate that moved, a line that got dropped, an exclusion that did not make the trip. Whatever you use, the second document should start as a copy of the first.
