Aluminium window quoting: best practices in Australia

A good quote is one the customer can read once, check against their own schedule and accept. Every question it leaves open becomes a phone call, and every phone call is a delay you did not price. This guide is about closing those gaps before the quote goes out.

Quote from current prices

Your supplier's prices move. Extrusion, powder coat, glass and hardware each change on their own timetable, and a spreadsheet you last updated months ago is a guess dressed up as a price. The fix is a habit, not a tool: one current price list per supplier, replaced whole when the supplier issues a new one.

• Replace the whole list. Patching single lines leaves the rest stale, and nobody remembers which lines were touched.
• Record the effective date. When a job is questioned later, you need to know which list the quote was built from.
• Price freight and surcharges as their own lines. Folding them into a profile rate hides them from you as much as from the customer.
• Set the validity shorter than the supplier's price hold.A quote that outlives the price list underneath it is a loss you agreed to.

In Alumetric each quote is priced from the price list that is current when you build it, and it records which list that was.

Show GST the way builders expect

A builder reconciles your quote against a cost plan, and the cost plan is ex GST. A quote that shows only a GST-inclusive total forces them to back the tax out by hand. A homeowner reads the total first. Give both readers what they need on the same document.

• Show each item ex GST, then the subtotal, the GST amount and the total.
• State on the document whether line prices include GST.
• Use the same treatment on the invoice. Builders lay the two side by side.

What every quote should state

The customer should not need to ring you to find out what they are buying. These five things belong on the quote itself, not in the covering email.

Scope by item

One line per opening, with the mark or room reference, the size as height by width in millimetres, the configuration, the frame colour, the glass and the hardware. A builder ticks each line against the window schedule. A lump sum for twelve windows cannot be checked.

Inclusions and exclusions

Say what is in: fabrication, glazing, fly screens, reveals, flashings, delivery to site, installation. Say what is out with the same care. Anything not listed will be argued about after the frames are on site, when you have the least leverage.

Validity

State the date the prices hold until and what happens after it. A quote with no validity date is open forever, and a customer who accepts it a year later will expect the same price.

Lead time

State when the clock starts: from deposit, from approval of shop drawings, or from final site measure. A lead time with no start point will be read from the date of the quote, and you will be late before you have cut a bar.

Payment terms

State the stages, what triggers each one and how you will invoice it. The figures are your business. The point is that the customer sees the terms before accepting, not on the first invoice.

Options and revisions without losing track

Customers ask for options: a different colour, laminated glass in the bedrooms, a better lock. The failure mode is three versions of one quote, none labelled, and nobody sure which one was sent.

• Clone the quote before a major change. The original stays as sent and the copy carries the change. When the customer refers to the first one, you can open it.
• Keep option pricing on one document. List each option as its own line, priced, and marked as not included in the total. Two separate quotes for one job get compared line by line and argued over.
• Number and date each revision and keep the same quote reference so the thread is obvious.
• After acceptance, every change is a variation. Price it on its own, state its effect on the lead time, and get it accepted in writing before you order.

From quote to invoice without retyping

The accepted quote already holds every line, every price and the GST treatment. Retyping it into an invoice is where items go missing, prices drift and GST is applied twice or not at all. Turn the accepted quote into the invoice directly, and raise each progress claim against the same document so the running total always matches what was quoted. That is the point of keeping quoting and invoicing together: the invoice is the quote at a later stage.