How to write a quote that gets accepted

A quote is a sales document that most small businesses treat as paperwork. The ones that get accepted are specific, easy to say yes to, and impossible to argue with later.

What has to be on it

• Who is quoting and who is being quoted — full legal names, not just trading names.
• A quote number and the date it was issued.
• Itemised lines: what, how many, at what unit price. Not one line saying ‘works as discussed’.
• Subtotal, any discount, tax, total.
• A validity date.
• What happens next — how to accept, and what the payment terms are.

The validity date does more work than you think

A quote with no expiry is an offer you have made forever, at prices that were true in the spring. It also removes the only polite reason to follow up. “This is valid until the 30th” converts a chase into a courtesy.

Thirty days is normal. Shorter if your input costs move; say so in the terms rather than surprising them later.

Discount then tax, in that order

The discount comes off the subtotal, and tax applies to what is left. Applying tax first and discounting the gross gives a different — and in most jurisdictions wrong — total. It is a small thing that an accountant will notice immediately.

Why totals sometimes do not add up

This is the bug that makes a document look amateur. Hold amounts as decimal fractions, round each line for display, and the displayed lines will sometimes not sum to the displayed total. Off by a penny, every time the fractions land badly.

Hold money in whole cents from the moment it is typed. Then the total always equals the sum of its own rows, because it literally is.

Rounding at the end rather than at the start is how invoices end up a penny out, and a penny out is what people notice.

Make the PDF the boring way

Your browser already contains a competent PDF writer. Press Print, choose Save as PDF, done. A page that loads a second PDF library to do a job the browser already does well is adding weight and a new set of font bugs for nothing. Ours hides the editor when printing, so what comes out is the document alone.

A quote is not a purchase order

A quote is what you offer; a purchase order is what your customer raises to commit to buying it. They need different wording, different numbering, and a delivery date rather than a validity date. Use the right one — sending a quote where a PO is expected slows the payment down.