How to write a quote: a guide for tradespeople and SMEs.

At a glance

• A complete quote says what you’ll do, what it costs, whether VAT is included, how long it’s valid and what isn’t included.
• With a fixed price, the price stands even if the job costs you more. If you go well over an approximate estimate, the client can withdraw.
• With a written deadline, your offer binds you until that date. Without one, the law decides.
• The time goes on hunting for the price list, the terms and old quotes. That part can be prepared by an automation, without inventing prices.

It’s seven in the evening when an email lands at a metalwork firm: railings for 14 balconies, about 42 metres, 100 cm high, galvanised, anthracite grey, installation included. The person who does the quotes is still on site. The price list is in an Excel file, the terms in a Word document, a similar quote from last year in some folder or other. Knowing how to write a quote, here, means three things: making it complete, knowing what it commits you to and sending it before anyone else.

The metalwork firm is an example, the same one used on the Digitam Quote page. The rules, though, are real, and they apply just as much to joiners, electricians, cleaning companies and anyone who makes parts to drawing.

How to write a quote: the lines you need

A good quote can be read in a minute and leaves no questions. These are the lines it must include.

• From whom, to whom. Your company with its address and VAT number (if you’re registered), the client, the date and a quote number.
• What you’ll do, clearly described. “Railing in hot-dip galvanised steel, 100 cm high, painted RAL 7016” is a description. “Railings as agreed” is not.
• Quantities and units. Metres, pieces, hours, lump sums: the client must be able to redo the maths.
• Prices. Unit and total, with any discounts on a separate line so they can be seen.
• VAT. Rate and amount, or “VAT included” with the rate.
• Type of price. Fixed, approximate or time and materials. It makes a big difference, as we’ll see below.
• Validity. How long the offer stands.
• Payment and timing. Deposits, due dates, delivery or installation date.
• What isn’t included. Masonry work, disposal, scaffolding, a second site visit. This is the line that prevents the most arguments later.

There’s one VAT rule worth knowing. Businesses with a turnover below CHF 100,000 a year are exempt from VAT unless they choose to register. And if you’re not registered, you can’t show VAT on your invoices: if you do, you may have to pay it over anyway3. Today’s quote is tomorrow’s invoice: keep them consistent.

Fixed price or estimate: what the law says

When you carry out a piece of work for a client (fitting a railing, redoing a bathroom, building a made-to-measure wardrobe), the Swiss Code of Obligations calls it a contract for work and services: you produce the work and the client pays for it4. How you set the price changes the rules.

Three ways to set the price

Price	What the Code of Obligations says	Article
Fixed price	The price is fixed. If the job costs you more, you absorb the difference. If it costs you less, the client still pays the full price.	Art. 373
Approximate estimate	The price is based on the value of the work and the expenses. If you exceed the estimate by a disproportionate amount without the client’s agreement, they can withdraw.	Art. 374 and 375
Time and materials	The price isn’t fixed in advance: the client pays for the value of the work and the expenses, in other words hours and materials.	Art. 374

“Where the payment was fixed in advance as an exact amount, the contractor is obliged to produce the work for the agreed amount and may not charge more even if the work entailed more labour or greater expense than predicted.”

A fixed price is a bet, and you’re the one placing it. It makes sense when you know the job well and have seen the site. Only extraordinary circumstances that nobody could have foreseen allow a court to increase the price or terminate the contract (Art. 373 para. 2).

An approximate estimate leaves more room, but it has a limit. If you exceed it by a disproportionate amount without the client’s agreement, they can withdraw, during or after the work; for a building on their own land, they can ask for a price reduction instead (Art. 375). The law doesn’t put a percentage on “disproportionate”. If the bill is going up, tell the client in writing beforehand, not on the invoice.

For time and materials, put your hourly rates and material prices in the quote: that way you’ve agreed the “value of the work” together. If the contract refers to a SIA standard (from the Swiss Society of Engineers and Architects), its rules apply too. This article isn’t legal advice: for an important contract, ask your fiduciary or a lawyer.

How long an offer is binding

The quote you send is an offer to enter into a contract: if the client accepts in time, there’s a contract. How long you’re bound depends on what you’ve written4.

• With a deadline. You’re bound until that date. If you haven’t received acceptance by then, you’re free (Art. 3).
• No deadline, by email or post. You’re bound until the point at which you could expect a reply sent properly and on time (Art. 5). The law doesn’t say how many days that is.
• No deadline, by phone or in person. The offer only stands if the client accepts immediately. On the phone, the law treats you as being present (Art. 4).
• “Without obligation”. If your terms rule out any commitment, you’re not bound (Art. 7 para. 1). But an offer that commits nobody carries little weight with the client either.

And your price list? Sending out rates and price lists isn’t an offer in itself (Art. 7 para. 2). A quote is.

A quote isn’t a price list. It’s a contract waiting for a signature.

Getting there first matters

Anyone asking you for a quote is often asking others too. In 2011, research published in the Harvard Business Review looked at how quickly companies respond to enquiries received online, and the conclusion was clear: most respond too late5. The data is from the US and fifteen years old. We couldn’t find a solid, recent Swiss equivalent, but common sense says the same.

The problem is who writes the quotes. In 2025, site managers, team leaders and production managers ranked second among the hardest occupations to fill in Switzerland; engineering technicians and specialists came third, electricians fourth6. In a small business, they’re often the very people writing the quotes, in the evening, after a day on site.

Where the time goes, and what AI can do

Writing the quote is the quick part. The time goes before that: finding the latest price list, the terms in the Word document, the similar quote you did for another client. And if the enquiry came in by phone, the notes on the back of an envelope.

42%

Swiss SMEs already use AI, mainly for translating and writing7. But a quote isn’t a letter. A general-purpose chat tool writes well, but it doesn’t know your prices: ask it for them and it may well make them up. The useful work is something else: reading the enquiry, working out what’s needed and picking the items from your catalogue, with your prices and your terms.

No quote goes out until a person has read and approved it, and anything not in the catalogue is flagged, not invented. The enquiry can also come from a phone call: with Digitam Voice, the quote can already be in draft by the time the call ends.

A case in production: in the sales office of an industrial company in the Mendrisio district, enquiries coming in through the website are read, priced from the list and passed to the right salesperson. The quote is ready in two minutes instead of two days. That won’t hold for everyone: it depends on how well organised the price list is and how similar the enquiries are.

Three things to sort out on Monday morning

1. One template. With all the lines from the first section, the expiry date and the type of price already filled in. You start from there, not from the last client’s quote.
2. One price list. In one place, with the date it was last updated. When a price changes, it changes there.
3. One response time. Decide how quickly every enquiry gets at least a reply, even if it’s just “your quote will be with you on Thursday”, and stick to it.

A signed quote becomes an invoice, and that’s where a different set of rules begins: you’ll find them in QR-bill, eBill and reconciliation. If, on the other hand, you send lots of similar quotes, the Digitam Quote demo shows you an enquiry turning into a PDF quote, ready to check.

Sources

1. Swiss VAT rates. Federal Tax Administration (FTA).
2. 13th OASI pension: implementing the initiative (page in Italian). Federal Social Insurance Office (FSIO), updated on 25 September 2026.
3. Federal Act on Value Added Tax (VAT Act), Art. 10, 11 and 27. Fedlex, SR 641.20.
4. Swiss Code of Obligations, Art. 3, 4, 5, 7 and 363 to 375. Fedlex, SR 220.
5. The Short Life of Online Sales Leads. James B. Oldroyd, Kristina McElheran and David Elkington, Harvard Business Review, March 2011 (US data).
6. Swiss Skills Shortage Index 2025. The Adecco Group (in German).
7. Künstliche Intelligenz: Schweizer KMU erwarten keine fundamentale Veränderung der Arbeitswelt (in German). AXA Switzerland, Sotomo study of 336 SMEs (March 2026), 15 September 2026.

Written by Alessandro Scerpella. Sources checked on 1 October 2026. If you spot a figure that doesn’t add up, email us at info@digitam.ch.