What a freelance quote has to contain

A badly written quote does not look wrong when you send it. It looks wrong three months later, when the client asks for a fourth version on the grounds that it was included, and you reread your own document without finding anything to answer them with.

A quote is not paperwork. It is the one place where you write down what you do and what you do not, at a moment when everybody still agrees.

What every quote carries

The formal requirements depend on where you are registered, and this is not the place to find them: tax authorities publish their own list and it changes. What follows is the shape, not the law.

• Who you are: name or trading name, address, and whatever registration number your country requires.
• Who the client is, and the name of the person who signs off.
• The date and how long the offer stands, thirty days being common.
• The work, line by line, with quantities and unit prices.
• The totals, before and after any sales tax, and the tax treatment when you charge none.
• Payment terms: deposit, instalments, accepted methods, and what happens if payment is late.
• A place for the client's acceptance, dated and signed.

The three lines that prevent disputes

None of them is required anywhere, and they are the only ones that earn their keep on the day things go wrong.

What is included, with numbers. How many proposals, how many rounds of revisions, which formats delivered, at what resolution. "A few rounds of feedback" is not a limit, it is an invitation to ask for one more.

What is not. Hosting, font licences, stock images, variants, maintenance. Not as a warning: as information.

What you need in order to start, and from when. That is the line nobody writes, and it is the one that puts the responsibility for a delay where it belongs. "Delivery fifteen working days from receipt of the copy and the vector logo" is a sentence that saves you an unpleasant conversation.

The quote comes after the brief, never before

This is the expensive mistake, and it is almost always made out of politeness: the client asks for a price, you want to be responsive, you quote.

Quoting before you have the answers is guessing. And an estimate given lightly becomes a ceiling: the client remembers it, will not reread it, and anything above it will look like a price rise.

The order that works is the other way round. The brief, then the quote. You send your questions, the client answers once, and you price what they wrote rather than what you imagined. It costs two extra days at the start and saves two weeks of correction later.

If the client insists on a range beforehand, give one and say what it is: a range, a named assumption, and the fact that it will be confirmed after the brief.

Quote, brief, contract: three different things

• The brief says what the client wants. They fill it in.
• The quote says what you do and what it costs. You write it, they accept it.
• The contract, or the terms behind the quote, says what happens when things go wrong: rights assignment, ownership of the files, termination, late payment.

A signed quote does the work of a contract for most ordinary jobs, provided your terms are attached or referenced. For a significant rights assignment or a long engagement, a real contract is worth the half-day it costs.

What Kalepio does with it

Kalepio does not write quotes, and that is an accepted limit rather than a missing feature: anything touching invoicing belongs with your accounting, not with a brief tool.

What it does is the part before. The client's answers arrive in one piece, written, dated, with the files attached: enough to price something real. The questions to ask, trade by trade, are here.

And the part after: deposits and balances become payment lines on the job, settled by link, into your own Stripe account. What order to ask for them in is here.

Frequently asked questions

What should a freelance quote include?

Who you are and who the client is, the date and how long the offer stands, the work line by line with prices, the totals and tax treatment, the payment terms, and somewhere for the client to accept it. The formal requirements depend on where you are registered.

Should you quote before or after the brief?

After. Quoting before you have the answers is guessing, and an estimate given lightly becomes a ceiling the client remembers and you cannot exceed without it looking like a price rise.

Is a signed quote a contract?

For most ordinary jobs, yes, provided your terms are attached or referenced. A significant rights assignment or a long engagement deserves a real contract.

What do you write in a quote to avoid disputes?

Three lines: what is included with numbers, what is not, and what you need in order to start along with the date the deadline runs from.