An estimate is a price with a shelf life
Two things turn a quote into a fight later, and neither of them is the number. The first is time: material prices move, your calendar fills, and a figure you gave in March is not a figure you can honor in September. The second is scope: the client heard a price for "the job" and you priced a list of specific things. Both are fixed by writing on the document — an expiry date and a list of what the price does not cover.
The validity window here is counted forward from the estimate date and printed on the sheet. Thirty days is the common default and there is nothing magic about it. Seven or fourteen makes sense when your costs move quickly. Sixty is generous and occasionally wins work from a client with a slow approval chain. If someone comes back after it lapses, you decide then whether to honor it or reprice — which is a decision you can only make if there was a date to lapse.
Line items and the detail column
Four columns: Description | Detail | Qty | Unit price. The detail column carries the spec — a size, a finish, a model number, a coverage assumption — and it is the column that quietly settles arguments. "Desk top replacement" at $425 is a number. "Desk top replacement, 60x30 white oak" at $425 is a number that cannot later be read as covering a 72-inch top in walnut.
If there is nothing to put there, three columns works and the detail is left blank. Tabs count as dividers, so a spreadsheet block pastes in unchanged. Quantities can be fractional for hours or partial units, and prices can carry dollar signs and commas.
Discount, tax, and the order they apply in
Line amounts are quantity times unit price, each rounded once to the nearest cent. Those rounded amounts are summed for the line-item total. A discount comes off that total, and tax is charged on what remains — discount first, then tax on the discounted figure. Doing it the other way, taxing the full amount and then discounting the whole thing, produces a tax figure that does not match what you would actually collect.
Tax is one rounding of the taxable amount at your rate. Nothing carries a fraction of a cent, and the line-item total, the discount, the tax and the estimate total always reconcile exactly. On a tax-inclusive quote the tax is derived as the total minus the backed-out taxable amount, so any stray cent sits in the tax line rather than making the parts disagree with the whole.
Sales tax rates in the US are set state by state and then stacked on by counties, cities and districts, so there is no rate this can fill in for you. Whether your particular work is taxable at all is a further question — labor and materials are often treated differently, and the answer changes at a state line. Look up the rate for the job address, and if the work is not taxable, set the mode to say tax is handled separately rather than showing 0%.
Exclusions are the part people skip
The scope block is where you write down what the price assumes and what it leaves out. The recurring subjects are permits, disposal and haul-off, electrical and plumbing, patching and painting after the work, after-hours or weekend labor, and access — whether you can get to the space during working hours or are queuing for a freight elevator. If any of those is not in the number, write a line saying it is not.
Payment structure belongs here too. A deposit on acceptance and the balance on completion is the ordinary shape for work of any size; the specific split is between you and the client. So does schedule: not a promise of a date, but the condition under which the date holds — "work begins within fourteen days of a signed acceptance, subject to material lead times" says something true and survives a supplier delay.
Acceptance, and what an estimate is not
The signature block turns the estimate into something the client has agreed to in writing at a price and on stated terms. That is worth having and it is easy to get — most clients will sign a quote where they would stall on a contract. What it is not is a full agreement. It says nothing about what happens if the work is late, who owns what, or how a dispute gets sorted out. For anything sizeable, or anything where those questions have obvious answers you would not like, the terms need writing down properly, with advice.
Everything here runs in your browser. No prices, client names or contact details leave the page, and nothing is saved for next time — a reload puts the defaults back. Print the sheet or copy the text before you navigate away. Keeping your standard line items in a note and pasting them in is the fastest way to reuse them.
Questions people ask
Estimate, quote, bid, proposal — does the word matter?
In everyday use, an estimate signals an approximate price that may move with conditions, while a quote or a bid signals a fixed price for a defined scope. Clients read that distinction even where nothing formal turns on it, so pick the word that matches what you mean and then make the document agree with it. If the price is firm, the exclusions have to be tight. If it is approximate, say what would move it — the sheet prints whatever heading and notes you write.
Should I show the tax separately or fold it into the price?
For a business client, a pre-tax price with tax added on a separate line is the usual and expected form — their accounting wants those numbers apart. For an individual, the total is the number they actually care about, and a quote that shows a smaller figure prominently and adds tax at the bottom reads as a surprise. Either way the document prints both, so the choice is really about which figure you say out loud first.
Is what I typed stored anywhere?
No. The calculation and the printable document are built in this browser tab, nothing is sent to a server, and a reload clears the form back to its defaults. To reuse an estimate, use the copy-as-text output and keep it in a note — the line-item block pastes straight back into the items box in the same format.