How to quote for a job and take a deposit up front

Last updated: August 2026

A quote is a decision point, not a document

Most quotes that go cold do not go cold because the price was wrong. They go cold because nothing ever forced a decision. You priced the job, you emailed a PDF, and then the work moved into the worst category a job can occupy: waiting on someone else to remember you exist.

The fix is to make accepting easy and to attach a small, reasonable commitment to it. A customer who has paid a deposit has decided. A customer who said “yeah, that sounds fine” on the doorstep has not.

What a quote needs to contain

You do not need a legal document. You need enough detail that nobody can honestly claim later that they thought something else was included.

• The work, in plain language. What you are actually going to do, described the way you would describe it to the customer’s face.
• What is not included. The single most valuable line in any quote. Making good, decorating, scaffolding, disposal, parking: whatever you are not doing, say so.
• Materials. Itemised or stated as a lump sum, but be clear which.
• The total, and whether it includes VAT. Ambiguity here costs you 20% of an argument you will probably lose.
• The deposit. The amount, and what it covers.
• Rough timing, and how long the price holds. Material prices move. An open-ended quote is one you will regret in four months.

How much deposit to ask for

There is no industry rule, and anyone who tells you there is one is guessing. The useful test is this: if this customer changed their mind the day after accepting, what would I be out of pocket?

For a job where you are ordering a specific boiler, a made-to-measure unit or anything non-returnable, the deposit should cover that order. For a labour-heavy job using generic materials it can be much smaller, because there you are asking for commitment, not funding. In practice most domestic trades land somewhere between 20% and 50%, but treat that as a description of what people do, not a target to hit.

Two things matter more than the percentage. Ask for the same proportion consistently, so you are not renegotiating it on every job. And put it in the quote, so the customer agrees to it at the same moment they agree to the price.

Getting an answer without the phone tag

The gap between sending a quote and hearing back is where jobs die. Every step you add (print it, sign it, scan it, post it) is another chance for the customer to put it on the pile.

What works is a quote they can read on their phone and accept or decline in one tap, with the deposit payable in the same place. No account to create, no app to install, no calling you back during working hours when they are also at work.

This is the part Dispatch is built around. You price the job up on the doorstep and send the quote as a branded PDF. The customer accepts or declines from a link and you see the answer in the system rather than wondering about it. You set the deposit as a percentage of the quote; when they accept, Dispatch raises the deposit invoice so they can pay by card straight away, and drafts the final invoice ready for when the work is done.

What should happen after acceptance

An accepted quote should become a scheduled job the same day, while the customer is still warm. That means booking the visit, telling the customer when you are coming, and making sure whoever does the work can see what was actually quoted rather than a summary of it.

This is where quoting connects to everything else. The accepted quote, the deposit invoice, the photos from the original fault report and the final invoice all belong to the same job, not to four different systems. If your quotes live in email, your schedule lives in a diary and your invoices live in a spreadsheet, somebody spends every Friday evening reconciling the three.

Once the work is booked, job scheduling for a small trades team covers keeping the week straight, and chasing an unpaid invoice covers the part nobody enjoys.

Three mistakes worth avoiding

1. Quoting verbally. A number said out loud in a hallway is not a quote, and you will remember it differently from the customer.
2. Rounding to a suspiciously neat figure. A quote of exactly £2,000 reads as a guess. £1,940 reads as a calculation, because it is one.
3. Not following up. One polite follow-up a few days later rescues a meaningful number of quotes that would otherwise expire in silence. Set the reminder the moment you send it.