How To Write Effective Quotes For Clients
A common question I get from both seasoned freelancers and beginners is how to go about writing quotes. Now, most of you know I recommend charging by the project for several reasons, the biggest being that the better you get at what you do, the more you screw yourself by charging hourly.
So many of you have wondered, if you don’t charge hourly, how do you ensure you don’t short yourself in the quote? A project quote is quite different from an hourly quote, mainly that it stays the same price from start to finish, unless the client changes the spec of the project.
Here I’ll show you some of the ways I determine the prices of the projects I charge.
Break The Project Up Into Pieces
The first thing I do before I start thinking about numbers is to break the project into pieces and list them separately. This makes it easier both for you to quote it correctly and for the client to see how much money goes into each feature (and prevents feature creep).
For example, for a typical site, I make break it up like this:
- XHTML/CSS/WordPress
- jQuery Homepage Slider
- jQuery Dropdowns
- Random Background Script
- Custom Contact Form
It’s then a lot easier to go through the list to see how long it should take.
How Long Do You Think It Will Take?
Just because you’re not charging hourly, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have an hourly rate. Every freelancer should know the minimum of money they need to charge an hour. The cool thing about project rates, is depending on how well you get the quote down, you tend to always make more that your minimum hourly rate.
So how long do you think each piece will take on it’s own? How long together?
Double The Time Of How Long You Think It Will Take
Now take that estimate of hours and double it. If you think the contact form will take you 30 minutes, it’s an hour. If you think the HTML will take you 5 hours, it’s now 10. Doubling the estimate is not about ripping the client off, and it doesn’t. It’s about covering yourself in case you go over the amount of time you thought it would take. And here’s a hint: you will.
It also covers you in case you overlooked something. I know I’m terrible about this. A client says he wants A, B, C, and D and through all of the noise and contacting, I only managed to see that he wanted A, B, and C. Now, it’s not fair to charge a client extra for D at the end of a project if I never said no to it in the first place. Padding your quote ensures you don’t get screwed over, which ensures the client has a pleasant experience with you.
Is The Client A Pain?
If the client is one who asks for a lot of revisions, emails or phones you constantly, than charge him for that privilege. In the business world, time is money and while you shouldn’t charge for every little thing, the clients who plan to take up hours a day in non-work work need to pay for taking away normally billable time. Also, if the client is argumentative, belittling or mean, charge him for the privilege to abuse you (although I would seriously think about passing him up).
How Do You Feel About The Quote?
I always find my intuition to be a good gauge of whether I’m charging too much or too little. Listen to that inside voice!
Your Tips
What are some of the ways you write your own quotes?
About the author
Amber Weinberg specializes in clean and semantic XHTML, CSS and WordPress development. She has over 10 years of coding experience and is pretty cool to work with. Amber is available for freelance work, so why not hire her for your next project?
Excellent post! I couldn’t agree more with the fact that everything takes twice as long as you think it will… it always happens, no matter how good you get.
I generally approach quotes the same way (quoting individual features), although I do offer standard “packages” to my clients. Defining these “packages” allows me to sell my services more easily and offers the client a baseline from which they can make a decision.
Yup, I’ve actually had this problem a lot lately, due to the fact I’ve been outsourcing backend programming and not fully understanding what it is the client wants :/ My poor programmer isn’t too happy about that, so he now writes a long description of what he’ll be doing before he starts and makes them agree to it lol.
Great post! I follow the same set of procedures, more or less. So much better than charging hourly! And there’s incentive for you to get things done as quickly as possible, while hourly encourages the exact opposite!
Amber I do the exact thing you describe here even down to doubling the time for each task. One thing I’d add for anyone who hasn’t been doing this awhile is your estimates will get better over time, especially if you track your time on each task. The first time I gave a client a quote I was way off and lost money. With each new project I got better.
It also helps to work with the same clients again and again. The more you work with a single client the more you’ll know if their project will take extra time or if their project runs smoothly from start to finish.
Right, people don’t realize that charging via projects is still based off hourly and doesn’t mean you’ll get screwed if the client changes the spec. For some reason, they assume if the client adds stuff to the project you can’t change the quote.
Many of my teachers in school were big fans of “Triple it” … They believed that if you triple your estimated time then you’d be a lot closer to the “real” time it was going to take you.
At first this worked well for me, but as I got faster I didn’t feel right about charging for that much estimated time… I’m closer to the “double it” that you mentioned here.
BTW: I came here via Freelance Folder; I love your articles there and I’m definitely enjoying your articles here. I’m curious how in the world you have time to write for them, write for yourself, code apps and build websites for clients? I have the worst time staying up-to-date on my blog because client work keeps me so busy…
Loving the article, can I add a few points?
Personally I charge by the hour / day and find that the better I get the more I can charge for my time. Thus my quotes and contracts cover things to do with change of scope / feature creep that feed directly into what is charged.
Regardless of whether you go by the hour or by the quote, it’s vital to scope out the work as thoroughly as possible and link your contracts to the written scope – it might take you a day or two or rigorous work just to get everything right before you start. I can guarantee that this is time well spent as it gives both parties the opportunity to walk away or renegotiate if needs be.
Hi,
Great article.
Agree with Arthur re packages; this can help frame conversations from day 1 (even if the client ultimately goes a different/bespoke route).
I’d also 2nd David King, I tend to do a lot of web applications and the scoping/discovery phase is absolutely *critical* to me. It allows to me fully explore the problem domain with the client in a chareable manner – if things crop up that were not considered before then we can either include them (as extra billable items) or park them till later; I’m covering my arse here from having to do D,E & F when I was only quoting for A, B & C.
David also mentions the contract word – I’m increasingly going this route to clarify payment terms etc. I typically have staged payment terms.
@Joel_hughes
Indeed; gotta get those contracts straight!!