Free Subcontractor Quote Template: Simplify Job-Costing to Maximize Your Profits

In this article, we’re going to share our free subcontractor quote template. Our team of industry experts has designed it based on the quote forms that are generated in our subcontractor management software, ServiceTitan.

A solid quote form can help subcontractors in the trades serve up polished, professional-looking estimates and standardize the format of their bids. We’ll explain below how to download and use our template in your business. 

But first, it’s worth considering that a quote or proposal template is just a document for capturing and presenting information. It’s nice to have, but a template doesn’t help much with solving the persistent challenges involved in the bidding and project management processes.

For example:

• Creating and calculating accurate estimates.

• Precise and reliable job costing over the course of a project.

• Tracking progress billing.

• Submitting applications for payment according to a payment schedule.

• Defending invoices when customers object to charges.

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Many subcontractors use solutions like Google Sheets, Google Docs, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Word, etc. — as well as various estimating software products — to manage the bidding and project management process. But these tools aren’t specifically designed to integrate subcontractor bidding and project management. As a result, they require a lot of manual work and upkeep to use and leave a lot of room for error.

In this post, we’ll explain in detail how a best-in-class software like ServiceTitan allows subcontractors to optimize their bidding process, while simultaneously addressing the challenges involved in job costing, schedule of values creation, invoicing, and more.  

Below, we’ll cover:

• How to download and use our editable quotation template.

• The complications of managing subcontractor bidding with a template alone.

• How ServiceTitan addresses these challenges and then some.

Want to see ServiceTitan in action? Schedule a call with us to learn more about how our software can streamline your entire business operation, from job costing, invoicing, and payroll, to scheduling, reporting, accounting, and more. 

How to Download and Use Our Subcontractor Quote Template

When our users generate a quote in ServiceTitan, the document comes standardized with certain fields:

• Estimate number and date

• Billing address and job address

• Line items, prices, and quantities

• Total estimated price

We’ve designed our free contractor quote template to look very similar:

It’s fully customizable, so you can enter your own company name and phone number, save the document to your computer, and then have it ready to use anytime you need to create a new bid. 

For each estimate, simply enter the relevant customer information and job details. Then click “Save As” to generate a document specifically for that quote, while preserving your free estimate template. 

This is just as easy as it sounds, but as we noted in the first section of this article, a PDF-based construction quote template can take you only so far. 

Trying to tackle subcontractor quotes with a template alone can have the effect of treating estimating as a standalone function, when in fact it’s inextricably linked to other core business processes, like job costing, work orders, payroll, invoicing, and payment collection. 

Treating the subcontracting quote process separately from these and other service industry functions often means confusion, delays, errors, and a reduced bottom line. 

In the next section, we’ll explain how our subcontractor management software integrates quotes with the rest of your business, ensuring that all of the interdependent parts operate seamlessly and in concert, driving efficiency and revenue growth.

How ServiceTitan Integrates the Entire Subcontractor Project Management Process (From Initial Estimate to Job Costing to Billing)

No matter their niche of the service industry, a subcontractor cannot very well turn a profit — let alone grow their business — without accurately priced bids. And to be confident that their quotes are accurate and profitable, they need to be sure their estimating process is on point and gets executed properly for every job.

When it comes to ensuring that they’re bidding for profit, no step is more important (or complex) than job costing. This is especially true for subcontracting work. Without accurate, efficient, well-documented cost estimates, business owners often find themselves unable to defend applications for payment, or unable to bill accurately over the course of a schedule.     

But job costing itself is a calculation with myriad inputs and variables, many of which, like the cost of equipment and materials, are dynamic — changing from day to day. For contractors using a decentralized approach, with a patchwork of spreadsheets and single-purpose software solutions, managing the job costing process can be onerous and prone to error.

The Challenges of Job Costing without a Subcontractor Management Software Solution    

Supplier purchase orders and change orders, labor hours, and other overhead expenses must be pulled from different sources. Data must be transferred amongst spreadsheets and file folders. Still other spreadsheets must be diligently maintained to track all of these movements and more. 

Dozens of opportunities for data entry mistakes are likely to occur daily. Even if an error is ultimately identified, it can be fiendishly difficult to figure out where it was introduced and what documents it has compromised.     

In this environment, overall business operations can quickly become chaotic, making it difficult for subcontractors to submit accurate job costing data on the prescribed payment cycle due dates, or to properly fill-out often-required continuation sheets. All this can lead to cash-flow shortages and even legal conflicts. After all, applications for payment that are late or inaccurate — in violation of payment terms — are unlikely to be paid in full, or in a timely fashion.

Our Solution: A Suite of Project Tracking Features for Subcontractors

ServiceTitan’s new subcontractor project management features centralize all of these core functions in one place, integrating them seamlessly and making them accessible via an intuitive interface.

To illustrate how it works, let’s look at 4 key areas:

1. Creating estimates

2. Project tracking

3. Applications for payment

4. Invoicing

1. Creating Estimates

While the format of ServiceTitan estimates resembles the template we provided above, the process of actually creating and processing an estimate with our software is very different from manually filling out a PDF. 

ServiceTitan’s fully integrated, customizable pricebooks allow subcontractors to easily populate estimates using materials from their preferred suppliers. 

Similarly, our inventory management features give them the ability to quickly verify availability and efficiently place orders to ensure that they have everything they need to start work once they’ve won a bid.

These features drastically improve our users’ job-costing capabilities, helping them to ensure that they are bidding accurately and for maximum profitability with each and every step of a job.  

Leveraging the capabilities of our Mobile app, contractors using ServiceTitan can attach photos and videos to quotes — as well as to subsequent documentation associated with job progress and billing, providing customers (and potential customers) with clear evidence of their work and its benefits. 

Techs and managers can even annotate photos to emphasize problems, improvements, and changes over the course of a project.  

Once an initial project estimate form has been completed, the information captured therein can be translated and transferred among other documents: a purchase order or application for payment, an up-to-date schedule of values (referred to in ServiceTitan as a Continuation Sheet), and more. 

After a payment application has been approved, creating an invoice is a matter of just a few clicks in the ServiceTitan interface. 

2. Progress Tracking

It all begins in the Project Overview page, pictured below:

Here, contractors can review the most basic, essential details for a project — name, location, number, customer contact information and the like — plus a summary of progress-to-date. Once a project is up and running, the Project Summary will include the percentage of the total contract sum completed, total retainage, total earned, total expenses, invoiced to date, and payments received.  

As a project moves forward after the initial bid proposal is won, a Budget vs Actual table, like the one shown above, helps contractors manage cash flow over time — and in real time. 

As work is completed, business owners and project managers get clear visibility into how the planned budget compares to actual, on-the-ground billing and expenses. 

Among other things, the Budget versus Actual feature gives ServiceTitan users the ability to view their project budget and margins both as dollars and as a percentage.    

Service businesses can drill down further on minutiae of their subcontracting construction projects with our Expense Details table, which furnishes a fine-grained, real-time detailed breakdown about expenses to date. 

For example, by clicking a dropdown, contractors can instantly see a breakout of expenditures associated with materials, equipment, and labor costs for individual tasks, like the installation of a boiler or gas piping.

In line with ServiceTitan’s fully integrated approach, our Estimate page links seamlessly to features for requisitioning materials and equipment, allowing users to choose the items they need and order them from their project tasks list without navigating out of the interface. 

Via an automated workflow process, those user selections initiate the creation of the necessary purchase orders. 

A Purchase Order page, like the one in the screenshot above, gives contractors the opportunity to select the quantity they need for each item they’re ordering, as well as indicate their preferred vendor and shipping location. 

3. Application for Payment

Every change or action made within a given subcontracting project in ServiceTitan is automatically saved and reflected in the Project Overview page. That includes purchase orders. 

When a contractor is ready to submit an application for payment, they can create one, as well as an accompanying continuation sheet for the relevant payment period. 

All of the data upon which those documents are based is accurately stored in ServiceTitan, eliminating the need to pull data from different sources. The continuation sheet — i.e. construction schedule of values — for example, generates automatically based on the initial sold estimate.   

To update an application for a given payment period, all users need to do is click a line item and enter the percentage of the item that’s reflected in the current bill: 

4. Invoicing

Like virtually any document generated in ServiceTitan, applications for payment and invoices can be easily converted to PDF and sent off to the customer or general contractor for approval. 

Inevitably, there will occasionally be pushback, sometimes even an outright dispute. But with ServiceTitan, all of the information a subcontractor might need to defend their application is saved and organized for easy reference and sharing.  

The business owners we work with say that, especially when it comes to big subcontracting projects, this capability makes it much easier to defeat denials, get paid regularly, and keep up steady cash flow during a project. 

And once a client signs off on an application for payment, creating an invoice is just a matter of a few clicks. That, too, can be near-instantaneously converted to PDF and delivered to the customer. 

Conclusion

Plenty of service business owners get by managing their subcontracting projects with something of a haphazard method, cobbling together spreadsheets, file folders, and software point solutions. 

Some of them even use a standalone PDF construction estimate template, like the one we’ve shared here. 

But for many subcontractors — particularly those working with construction companies, or simply doing a lot of construction jobs — having a comprehensive solution like ServiceTitan to seamlessly integrate the subcontractor estimating, project tracking, and invoicing process with the other core elements of their business is becoming increasingly indispensable.      

And, as we hope our walk-through indicates, it’s not hard to see why. 

When it comes to ensuring accurate, profitable job costing and seamless follow-through, all the way to that final invoice, ServiceTitan’s efficiency, precision, and speed are simply very tough to match, no matter how well-designed their job estimate template. 

Want to see ServiceTitan in action? Schedule a call with us to learn more about how our software can streamline your entire business operation, from job costing, invoicing, and payroll, to scheduling, reporting, accounting, and more.