Estimate vs Quote: What Contractors Should Send, and When

The message lands on WhatsApp, and nobody has stood in the bathroom yet: "Roughly how much?" A 5-foot tub has to come out, a low-profile pan has to go in, and the homeowner wants a number tonight. They will repeat that number to whoever decides with them, and the quote will be held up against it once the alcove is measured.

What is the difference between an estimate and a quote?

An estimate is an approximate price, usually a range, given before you know the whole job, and it leaves the price open. A quote is a firm offer for a described scope, with lines, a total and a validity, 30 days on this one. Once the customer accepts it, both sides are bound. A change goes through a new document they accept in writing.

This shower is a tub-to-shower conversion: the 5-foot tub out, a 60 x 32 inch low-profile pan in its place. The text came in at night, the tape stayed in the truck, and nobody has looked at the framing behind the surround. I am pricing it twice. A range goes back in the thread tonight, and the quote goes out after the walkthrough, because those 2 documents are not doing the same job.

The estimate is the reply you can send while the tub is still full. The quote is what leaves after you have stood in the alcove, with a pan model and a door in mind. Between the 2, I keep the text free of line items, because a message that already lists every task, with quantities and prices, can be accepted on measurements nobody took.

The word at the top of the page

Homeowners read the title before the lines. "Estimate" in large type sounds like a number that can still move. "Quote" sounds like a number you will stand behind. The lines, the total and the validity bind you, not the word at the top.

Depending on the country, an estimate can still bind the contractor within a reasonable limit, and a detailed document titled estimate can be treated as a firm offer.

In the US, most contractors call the priced document they send an estimate, even when the price is firm and the page already carries lines, a total and a date it expires. A homeowner who asks for an estimate is often asking for that page. Send the full page under the word estimate, and acceptance can still lock both of you. Text a single number and call it a quote, and the heavy word is sitting on a thin message.

In Quebec, the price offer is usually called a soumission, and devis often means the technical description of the work, written before anyone puts a price on it.

The right word on the wrong page protects nobody. A sheet that already lists quantities, unit prices, a total and a 30-day validity will be read as an offer the day the customer says yes, including when the title still promised a range. I pick the title last.

A one-line "quote" that says "shower, 4,200" puts the heavy word on a text. An "estimate" that copies the measured table already carries the lines, the total and the date of an offer.

The shower estimate, by text

This is the message I would send before I drive over.

"3,500 to 5,000 before tax. The drain and the supply lines stay where they are, there is no rot behind the tub, and the tile is a standard field tile. Firm price after the walkthrough."

I leave the line items off that text. A single figure is the number they repeat without the sentences around it, and the quote looks like it climbed even when it landed inside the range. The text gets forwarded. If only the range goes, the reply comes back as the low number, and the high end is already gone.

Leaving the drain where it is keeps you out of the slab. Moving a shower drain is often another day and another trade, and that work sits above 5,000. "No rot behind the tub" is the assumption I cannot check while the tub is still in: the surround hides the backer and the framing, and soft framing gets priced by the square foot once you open it. "Standard field tile" keeps out the slab they saw at the showroom and now believe is included because they said "a shower."

A 60-inch alcove with a 60-inch pan looks tidy until the walls are out of square, or the glass door needs a stud that is not there. That is most of the 1,500 spread, together with the haul and whatever is behind the surround. Tighter than that, before the walkthrough, I would be promising a precision I do not have. Wider, and the homeowner hears that I am guessing. They are right.

I will not throw out a number.

No photo and no measurement, and I send a time for the walkthrough. An acrylic tub will flex through a narrow door. A cast-iron tub will not, and the demo becomes another person plus a haul-away the evening text never priced, especially when the stairs turn and the landing is tighter than the doorway. A photo of the tub, the doorway and the path to the truck is enough to bring that high end down, because the demo price follows that path, the weight of the tub and the floor you have to protect on the way out. A close-up of the trim tells me the faucet brand, which is the cheapest line on the quote.

Passing on the number loses the call to whoever blurted a round figure. I take that loss when I have nothing to look at, because a wrong number turns into hours with no line once the wall is open.

The shower quote, after the walkthrough

The walkthrough supplies what the text could not: the 60 x 32 pan that actually fits, the tile area once the returns are counted, the glass door, the valve, and the hours to tie the supplies in. The framing behind the tub stays closed. I park that repair as an option, by the square foot, and I keep it out of the total so the quote is not padded. Use these prices, before tax.

Waterproofing, 60 sq ft at 4, comes to 240. Wall tile, the same area at 14, comes to 840. Plumbing connections, 4 hours at 85, come to 340. Cleanup, 2 hours at 55, comes to 110. Demo, pan, door and valve are a lot price or a unit, 450, 780, 650 and 520. Added up, 450 + 780 + 650 + 520 + 240 + 840 + 340 + 110 comes to 3,930 before tax.

Those 8 lines belong on the quote. Last night’s text carried none of them. The total lands inside the 3,500 to 5,000 sent the night before. A homeowner with a calculator can divide a line and get the unit price back. If the text had said 2,900, this 3,930 would look like a 1,030 bump, and the argument would start before any tile goes up.

Off that total, one line waits: replace rotted subfloor or framing behind the tub at 12 per sq ft, and only after a written change order. 15 sq ft of that repair would be 180, and those 180 stay off the quote until they agree in writing.

The quote is good for 30 days.

The pan and the glass door are ordered, and I will not hold those prices past the date, because the supplier will not hold them for me. After that I reprice those 2 lines before I order, including when the homeowner calls to say the old number still works for them.

The deposit is written on the quote. I am leaving the percentage off it here, because some states cap what a contractor can collect on a home improvement job before the work starts.

Sales tax depends on where the job is and on the work.

How to build the lines, quantity times your unit price, is in how to write a construction quote. The lines you repeat on a bathroom sit on the bathroom quote template, and the other trades are on the quote templates. Sending the shower the day you measured is covered in how to write an estimate on site from your phone.

When the price changes mid-job

The morning the surround comes off, the framing is soft, or a knife goes into the subfloor. Stop there.

The waterproofing already priced at 240 assumes a substrate that holds. Membrane over rot fails later, on you, with the tile coming off again after the thinset has set and the room has been out of use for nothing. The unit price is already on the quote, 12 per sq ft. Measure the area, write the change order, get it accepted in writing, and only then keep going.

A yes in the dust, repeated that same afternoon, is how the fight starts. The homeowner remembers that it was included. On your side, the memory is that they said to keep going. Both versions fit in the same bathroom, and neither one is written down.

Before any more of the wall comes off, the paper has 4 things on it.

• What you found behind the tub, and the area you measured.
• The price per square foot already written on the quote.
• The extra time, in hours or in days.
• The customer’s signature on the change order, before the work continues.

If the repair is priced after the tile is on, the thinset has set, and pulling a square foot to reopen the price wrecks the wall.

From estimate to quote in WhatsApp

The request landed in WhatsApp, and the range went back in that same thread, in your words, the same night. After the walkthrough, a voice note or a photo of the bathroom plus 2 lines of text goes to Shappy, which builds the quote from your price library, puts the subfloor repair on as an option off the total, and holds every line for a read before the PDF or the share link goes out. Nothing goes out until you approve.

If they want a different glass door than the one priced at 650, the revision stays on that same quote, new door, same scope, same assumption on the drain. The file goes through construction quotes on WhatsApp. The photo of the room, the one the lines were built from, follows the path on photo to quote.

If they keep the PDF and go quiet, the timing of the messages is in following up a quote on WhatsApp.

A single number on the phone is something I have stopped giving: a range and 2 written assumptions are enough for the night of the text. To take this shower from the text to the quote after the walkthrough, the trial starts on the pricing page.