Hidden Costs Builders Forget to Price: A Quote Checklist
The short answer
The costs builders forget aren't the bricks and the labour. They're the prelims (skips, protection, scaffold, parking, cleaning), your own time on visits and management, overheads, client-chosen items without an allowance, unknowns in old buildings and the cost of getting paid. Put each one on the quote as its own line.
- Prelims are where profit disappears: skips, protection, welfare, scaffold, parking, cleaning, supervision.
- Your time and your overheads are costs. Visits, pricing, managing, admin, van, insurance and your salary all need paying for.
- Client choices need allowances; old buildings need a contingency. Say both in the quote.
- Getting paid costs money too: retentions, late payers and the cash you fund between stages.
The job went well. The client was happy. And when you add it all up at the end, there's almost nothing left.
Most of the time the big items were priced right. The bricks, the boards and the labour were all there. What went missing were the hidden costs builders forget to price: skips, protection, parking, your evenings pricing it, the week managing subcontractors.
Here's the checklist we use, so the next quote carries all of it. Want us to go through one of your quotes with you? Book a free strategy call.
Why hidden costs eat the profit
When builders price, they price what they can see: materials and labour for each item of work. The costs that disappear are the ones that don't belong to any one item:
- The cost of running the site (prelims)
- The cost of you (visits, pricing, managing, admin)
- The cost of running the company (overheads)
- The cost of the unknown (old buildings, client choices)
- The cost of getting paid (retentions, funding the job between stages)
None of these shows up on the drawings. All of them come out of your profit if they're not on the quote.
- Prelims: the costs of running the site
Prelims are the costs of running the site rather than building anything. On a three-month job they can wipe out the whole profit.
- Skips and waste removal
- Floor and wall protection
- Welfare: toilet, water, power
- Scaffold and access towers
- Parking permits, congestion charge, ULEZ
- Weekly and final cleaning
- Deliveries and plant hire
- Travel and accommodation
- Job-specific insurances
- Surveys, drawings, building control
As a rough check, prelims on a refurb often come to several percent of the job. Price them as their own line. Clients accept them when they see what they are.
Want us to check one of your quotes for missing prelims?
Book a free call and bring a real job.
- Your own time
Owner-builders give away their own time more than anything else:
- Site visits and surveys before you even quote
- Pricing in the evenings
- Managing subcontractors, ordering and the client's phone calls
- Supervision on site, even on days you're not on the tools
- Snagging and return visits after the job
If you price your own trade but not your management, you're coordinating the whole job for free. Add a management margin on every subcontract package: you're coordinating, supervising and carrying the risk. And never price your own wage as profit. It's a cost. More on that in how much a builder should pay themselves.
- Overheads: the cost of the company
Van, insurance, accountant, phone, software, an office, marketing, an admin person and a fixed salary for you. If they're not inside every price, every job is quietly subsidised by your profit.
- Add up 12 months of overheads, including your salary.
- Divide by the turnover you expect. That's your overhead %, for example £60,000 ÷ £500,000 = 12%.
- Check every quote: the gross margin must cover that 12% and still leave a net profit.
- Small jobs need a higher margin %. The same office time and travel sit on a smaller price.
Using markup and calling it margin. A 25% markup is only a 20% margin. Price = cost ÷ (1 − target margin). Our pricing guide has the full method and a worked £80K extension.
Profit leaking from your pricing, your cash or your sales? Take the free 4-minute Construction Business Scorecard: 18 questions on your pipeline, sales, pricing, cash flow and systems, with your weakest area shown first. Want a full estimate built for you? See our construction estimating service.
- Materials, client choices and the unknown
| What goes wrong | The fix on the quote |
|---|---|
| Client buys materials, you lose margin and control | Supply them yourself and add a margin |
| Client picks £120/m² tiles on a job priced at £30/m² | An allowance per item: "Tiles: £35/m² supply allowance". Anything above is a variation |
| Drainage, joists or wiring you can't see until it's opened up | A provisional sum for that item |
| General unknowns in a refurb or old building | A contingency, often 5–10%, stated in the quote |
| Extra work asked for on site | A priced variation, signed before you do it |
Found something mid-job that the quote never covered? Here's who pays for unforeseen works and what to send the client the same day.
Allowances stop the most common fight in residential building: the client choosing £120/m² tiles for a job priced on £30/m².
If a cheap subcontractor price looks too good, check it against your own rates library. It usually means something is missing from their scope, and it'll be missing from yours too. If materials have already gone up since you quoted, read material prices went up after the quote.
The Builder's Pricing Playbook
Rates library, pricing by package, the prelims list, overheads and margin, allowances and a quote layout that wins. 13 pages, free.
Get the free guide
- The cost of getting paid
Even a perfectly priced job can lose money if you fund it.
- Retentions. Commercial clients often hold back 3–5% of every payment, with half usually coming back only after the defects period. Price it in and diarise the dates.
- Funding the job. If you invoice after each stage, you pay labour, subcontractors and materials for weeks before the client pays. Make each stage payment due before the stage starts. See how much deposit to take.
- Late payers. Chasing money is time. Payment terms in a written contract on every job.
Your before-every-quote checklist
Run through this before you send any price:
- Prelims priced as their own line, item by item
- Your visits, pricing, management and snagging time included
- Overhead % and target margin applied (margin, not markup)
- Allowances for every client-chosen item, provisional sums for unknowns, contingency on old buildings
- Payment schedule with deposit and stages due before each stage
Then, after every job, compare the actual profit with the quoted profit. Whatever line was wrong goes into your rates library, so the next quote is better. Our job costing system shows how. Already lost money on one? See underquoted a job: what to do.
In our one-to-one mentoring, Sviat goes through your real quotes with you. He uses the same pricing system he runs in his own construction company, Craftex. Programs aim for results in about 4 months, not 1–3 years. Individual results, not typical or guaranteed. To start with one of your quotes, book a free strategy call.
Busy jobs, little profit?
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Your next 7 days
- Last 3 quotes checked against the prelims list
- Overhead % worked out from 12 months of costs
- Target gross margin set, priced as margin not markup
- Allowance and contingency wording added to your quote template
- Actual vs quoted profit checked on every finished job
