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Having a template for your estimates is a must for any freelancer.

Here's why:

First and foremost, you need to be spending your time designing not fiddling with estimate forms. It's tedious and it's no fun, so why not make life easier by having a template around. Then you can just duplicate it, fill in new information, and be done with it.

Because, of course, you are professional. Sending an email like "Hey Bob, sure, I can do that website for ya, let's say $2500." just isn't going to cut it. If someone asks you for a price on a website, an official estimate is what you should provide. This also can take the heat off of you in that initial conversation where you might feel obligated to start pulling numbers out of the air in terms of what a design might cost. Just say "let me work up an estimate for you and get it to you in the next couple days." This forces you to be professional, do some research, and write up a quote that you feel comfortable with.

There are some things that are just uncomfortable to talk about on the phone or even through email. Stuff like "if you don't pay this within 30 days of completion, I'm going to have to charge you an extra 10%." If you use an estimate form, you don't ever need to say it, the legal information is right there on the document. You wrote it, they're going to see it, everyone is covered. This is also a good place to mention sales tax. Many states charge zero sales taxes for purchases where the goods are "100% digitally deliverable", even for in-state sales, make sure to look into that for your own state. You may wish to retain legal rights to the artwork files you create, the estimate is a good place to state that as well.

Based on your conversations, you should get as good of a feel for what the design project will entail and include all that information on the estimate. Say you are working on a website design and all the sudden your clients asks you to put in a "store" section where they can sell their product directly through the site. If you had no idea this was coming, now you'll be able to point back to your detailed estimate and note that no mention of eCommerce was made. Time is ultimately what is important here. A client is not entitled to 30 rounds of edits at the estimate price because they just can't decide on a color. For this reason, you may want to include explicit details about this. Perhaps you could state how many hours you estimate the project to take that you'll warn them if the project starts to exceed that. Perhaps you could allow only 3 rounds of edits before an hourly rate applies. Either way, you should let them know that the estimated price may vary by some small percentage but that their approval will be required for anything beyond that.

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How about it folks? What did I miss? Is there anything else you include on an estimate, quote, or invoice?

Source: Tutorialblog.org