How to Write a Quote for a Job in NZ — Step-by-Step Guide

A trade quote is a formal offer to complete specific work at a specific price. In New Zealand, a quote (as opposed to an estimate) is generally considered a fixed price — the customer expects to pay the quoted amount unless the scope changes. This makes accuracy critical.

Every professional trade quote in NZ should include:

• Your business details: Legal business name, trading name, GST number (if registered), contact details, and physical address. If you're a registered company, include your NZBN.
• Customer details: Full name, contact details, and the job site address (which may differ from the customer's address for property investors or landlords).
• Quote number and date: A unique reference for tracking. Sequential numbering (Q-001, Q-002) is standard.
• Scope of work: The most important section. Describe exactly what's included: which areas, what preparation, what materials, how many coats, what standard of finish. Be equally clear about what's excluded — this prevents disputes later.
• Itemised pricing: Break down materials and labour. Customers increasingly expect to see where their money goes. Lump-sum quotes are simpler but harder to justify if the customer pushes back on price.
• GST treatment: State clearly whether the price is GST-inclusive (residential customers expect this) or GST-exclusive (trade-to-trade work is usually exclusive). Calculate and show GST separately.
• Payment terms: Deposit amount (typically 30–50% for jobs over $3,000), progress payment schedule, and final payment timing (on completion or within 7 days).
• Validity period: How long the quote is good for — typically 30 days. This protects you if material prices increase.

Whether you use software or a manual template, the quoting process follows the same logical steps:

Step 1: Understand the scope. Visit the site and talk to the customer. What do they actually want? A full repaint or just touch-ups? Interior, exterior, or both? Are there specific colours or brands they want? What's the condition of the existing surfaces? Take detailed notes and photos. The quality of your quote depends entirely on the quality of your site assessment.

Step 2: Measure and quantify. Measure all surfaces that need work. For painting: wall heights and widths, ceiling areas, door and window counts (to subtract from wall areas), trim/architrave lengths. Use a laser measure for accuracy. Don't round down — underestimating area is the most common cause of quoting too low. See our guide to estimating painting time for detailed methodology.

Step 3: Calculate materials. Based on your measurements, calculate what you need. For painting: litres of paint (area ÷ coverage rate × number of coats), primer if required, filler, sandpaper, masking tape, drop sheets. Always add 10% for wastage. Check current pricing — Resene and Dulux prices change seasonally. See our painting cost guide for current NZ pricing data.

Step 4: Calculate labour. Estimate hours based on the work involved. For painting, the rough guide is 8–12m² per hour for standard interior walls (including prep) but this varies hugely with surface condition, height, and complexity. Price labour at your actual cost — including wages, ACC, holiday pay — not just the hourly rate. See NZ painting hourly rates for current benchmarks.

Step 5: Add overheads and margin. Your quote price isn't just materials + labour. Add vehicle costs, insurance, tool depreciation, admin time, and your profit margin. Most NZ trade businesses target 15–30% net profit margin. See our painting business profit margin guide for detail on what healthy margins look like.

Step 6: Format and present. Use a professional layout — your own template, Xero quotes, or quoting software like ATT. Send the quote as soon as possible after the site visit, ideally same-day. Speed of response is one of the strongest predictors of winning the job.

Here's what a painting quote for a standard NZ 3-bedroom house interior might look like:

Scope: Interior repaint — all walls and ceilings in living areas, hallway, and 3 bedrooms. Includes: wash down, fill minor imperfections, sand, apply 1 coat primer (where needed) and 2 coats Resene SpaceCote Low Sheen (walls) and Resene Ceiling Paint (ceilings). Excludes: wallpaper removal, exterior, garage, large-scale plaster repair.

Materials:

• Resene SpaceCote Low Sheen (walls) — 30L @ $85/10L = $255
• Resene Ceiling Paint — 20L @ $65/10L = $130
• Resene Quick Dry Primer — 10L = $75
• Filler, sandpaper, masking — $80
• Drop sheets, cleaning supplies — $40
• Materials total: $580

Labour:

• Prep (wash, fill, sand) — 16 hours @ $55/hr = $880
• Priming — 8 hours @ $55/hr = $440
• Painting (2 coats walls + ceilings) — 32 hours @ $55/hr = $1,760
• Labour total: $3,080

Subtotal: $3,660
GST (15%): $549
Total (GST inclusive): $4,209

This is a simplified example — your actual quote would include more detail on specific rooms, paint colours, and any complications. For a full example with annotations, see our painting quote example page.

These are the mistakes that cost trade businesses the most money. Most experienced tradies have made all of them at least once:

• Underestimating prep time. Surface preparation is typically 30–50% of the total labour on a painting job. New painters consistently underquote prep. If the existing paint is in poor condition, prep can exceed painting time.
• Forgetting overheads. Quoting materials + labour and calling that the price is a recipe for zero profit. Vehicle fuel, insurance, tool wear, phone costs, admin time, and ACC all need to be covered. Most trade businesses need at least 15% above direct costs to break even on overheads.
• Not specifying exclusions. If you don't say what's excluded, the customer may assume everything is included. State it explicitly: "excludes wallpaper removal, exterior work, moving heavy furniture, and repairs to damaged plasterboard."
• Quoting too slowly. The number one reason tradies lose jobs isn't price — it's speed. If you visit on Monday and quote on Thursday, someone else quoted on Tuesday. Aim for same-day quoting. Quoting software with templates and AI assistance (like ATT's Mate AI) makes this achievable.
• Not following up. Send the quote, wait a day or two, then follow up once. A simple "Hi [name], just checking you received the quote and whether you have any questions" wins a significant percentage of undecided customers. Most tradies never follow up.
• Rounding down on measurements. Always round up. Every wall you under-measure means either eating the cost or going back to the customer for a variation (which damages the relationship).
• Ignoring your acceptance rate. If you track how many quotes you send and how many are accepted, you can identify pricing or presentation issues. Below 40% usually means your prices are too high or your quotes don't look professional enough. Above 80% often means you're underpricing. The sweet spot for most painting businesses is 50–65%.

A quote is the starting point of the job lifecycle. The full cycle runs: quote → acceptance → job creation → scheduling → work → completion → invoice → payment. The efficiency of this cycle determines your cash flow.

When a customer accepts your quote, several things need to happen:

• Confirm in writing. Get written confirmation (email is fine) of the accepted quote. This is your contract for the agreed scope and price.
• Collect the deposit. For jobs over $3,000, request 30–50% upfront. This is standard practice in NZ trades and protects your cash flow for material purchases.
• Schedule the work. Assign a date, notify your team, and confirm the schedule with the customer. Job scheduling software makes this systematic rather than ad hoc.
• Track the job. As work progresses, update the job status. This gives visibility across the business and helps with scheduling future work.
• Invoice on completion. The fastest path to payment is invoicing on the day the job is done — not at the end of the week or month. If your quote was built in quoting software, the invoice can be generated directly from the quote data without retyping.

This is where quoting and invoicing software adds the most value: the same data flows from quote through to invoice, with no manual re-entry at each step. ATT connects this entire workflow, including pushing the final invoice to Xero for accounting.

For more on the business side of running a painting operation, see how to start a painting business in NZ and our profit margin guide.