quote-builder

---
name: quote-builder
description: Turns notes from an enquiry call into a priced, itemised quote with assumptions, exclusions, a validity date and payment terms, at your own rates. Use after any pricing enquiry.
---

# Turn a phone call into a priced quote in ten minutes

You paste the notes or transcript of the enquiry plus your own rate card. You get back a finished, itemised quote you can send the same day.

## What it does

1. **Split the notes into priced lines before pricing anything:** read the notes and write one line per separate piece of work, each with a quantity and a unit (hours, square metres, items, days). Anything the customer said that has no quantity attached is not a line, it is an assumption or a question. List the questions at the top so the owner answers them before the quote goes out.
2. **Take the rates from the owner, never from the air:** ask once for the labour rate per hour or per day, the materials mark-up percentage, any call-out or minimum charge, and the travel rate. If a rate needed for a line is missing, name that line, say which rate is missing, and stop. Do not price a line from a typical market figure.
3. **Decide and label it: quote or estimate:** Business Companion, the Chartered Trading Standards Institute service, puts it plainly: "A quotation is normally a fixed price whilst an estimate is generally a rough guess of what the work would cost." Pick one word, put it in the title, and use only that word throughout. If the scope is not tight enough to hold a fixed price, it is an estimate and the document must say so.
4. **Price the lines in the same shape every time:** labour as hours multiplied by the rate, materials at cost with the mark-up shown as its own figure, plant or hire at the day rate multiplied by days, waste and disposal as a named line. Sub-total labour, sub-total materials, sub-total other, then the total. A customer who can see the three sub-totals argues about the job, not about you.
5. **Write the assumptions, and make each one a thing that would change the price:** access, parking, power and water on site, the existing surface or system being sound, the customer clearing the room, normal working hours, no asbestos or hidden services. Say what happens if an assumption is wrong: the work stops and a revised price is issued before it restarts.
6. **Write the exclusions, naming what a customer would otherwise expect to be included:** making good and decoration, scaffolding, structural work, permits and applications, the removal of items not listed, out of hours work. Anything the customer mentioned on the call and is not being priced must appear here by name, so nobody can say it was forgotten.
7. **State VAT one way and only one way:** if the business is VAT registered, show the net total, the VAT and the gross total, because Business Companion states that "All price indications that can be seen by consumers must include VAT and any other compulsory charges or taxes". If it is not registered, write "No VAT is charged, this business is not VAT registered" so the customer does not expect to reclaim it. GOV.UK sets compulsory registration when taxable turnover for the last 12 months goes over £90,000, so if the owner is near that figure, flag it rather than assuming.
8. **Set the validity date and the payment terms in figures:** a validity period, 30 days unless the owner says otherwise, with the actual expiry date written out, because material prices move. Then the deposit, any stage payments tied to named milestones, and the balance due date. For business customers, GOV.UK gives statutory interest of "8% plus the Bank of England base rate for business to business transactions" and says an agreed payment date "must usually be within 30 days for public authorities or 60 days for business transactions", so put the interest clause in and keep the date inside 60 days.
9. **Add the cancellation notice when the job was agreed in the customer's home:** regulation 30 of the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 says that for a service contract "the cancellation period ends at the end of 14 days after the day on which the contract is entered into". Put that right on the quote, with a line for the customer to sign if they want work to start inside the 14 days.

## Then it checks

1. Every priced line has a quantity, a unit and a unit price that came from the owner's rate card, and the lines add up to the total shown. Recalculate the arithmetic, do not trust the first pass.
2. The word "quote" or "estimate" appears consistently and matches reality: a fixed total is called a quote, a range or an approximate figure is called an estimate. Both words in one document is a failure.
3. No figure appears anywhere that the owner did not supply or that is not derived from a figure they supplied. Point at the source of each number.
4. VAT is handled in exactly one of the two ways in step 7, and the totals are arithmetically consistent with whichever was chosen.
5. The validity expiry date, the payment terms and, where the job was agreed away from business premises, the 14 day cancellation wording are all present.
6. Assumptions and exclusions are both non-empty, and every item the customer raised on the call is either priced, assumed or excluded by name. Nothing from the call is unaccounted for.

Any check fails: name it, redo that step once. Failed twice: say what is wrong and stop.

## Rules

- Public information only.
- Never invent a fact, a number or a quote.
- Never invent an hourly rate, a material price, a lead time or a supplier. If one is missing, say which line it blocks and stop rather than filling the gap.
- A quote presented as a fixed price is a commitment the customer can hold you to, so never label something a quote to look more professional when the scope is still open.
- This prepares a commercial document for the owner to check and send. It is not legal, tax or VAT advice. Standard terms, cancellation wording and anything about VAT registration should be checked by a solicitor or an accountant before they are used again and again.

## Built from

- Business Companion, Supplying services (Chartered Trading Standards Institute), https://www.businesscompanion.info/en/quick-guides/services/supplying-services, read 7 September 2026: the quotation versus estimate wording used in step 3, and the point that information given to a consumer is binding where the consumer relies on it, which is why the document must not carry both words.
- Business Companion, Providing price information, https://www.businesscompanion.info/en/quick-guides/pricing-and-payment/providing-price-information, read 7 September 2026: the requirement that consumer facing price indications include VAT and other compulsory charges, which sets the VAT presentation in step 7.
- The Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013, regulation 30, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2013/3134/regulation/30/made, read 7 September 2026: the 14 day cancellation period for a service contract, running from the day the contract is entered into, which is the notice added in step 9.
- GOV.UK, VAT registration and Late commercial payments, https://www.gov.uk/vat-registration/when-to-register and https://www.gov.uk/late-commercial-payments-interest-debt-recovery, read 7 September 2026: the £90,000 rolling 12 month registration threshold, the 8% plus Bank of England base rate statutory interest, and the usual 60 day limit on agreed business payment dates, all used in steps 7 and 8.
- GitHub Search API, https://api.github.com/search/repositories?q=claude+skill+quote+estimate+trades, queried 7 September 2026, and anthropics/skills, https://github.com/anthropics/skills, 174,998 stars read from api.github.com on 7 September 2026: the search returned "total_count": 0, so no public skill for trade quoting exists to borrow from. The file layout, the folder plus SKILL.md with name and description in YAML frontmatter, is taken from the anthropics/skills README.