Carpenter Decking Quote Structure That Protects Your Price

A carpenter decking quote structure that protects your margin has five parts: a measured level survey instead of a tape dragged across the grass, ground conditions written in as a named assumption with a price attached, board grade and fasteners offered as customer-visible options rather than absorbed silently, a line-by-line split of labour and material so the labour-based tax deduction can be calculated correctly, and a written variation rule (ÄTA) saying exactly what happens, and at what rate, when you dig and find something nobody could see. Decking is the classic fixed-price job where the profit is lost underground, before a board is cut. The quote is where you win it back.

Why decking quotes lose money

Nothing about a deck is hard, and that is the problem. It looks easy enough to price from a photo and a phone call, so it gets priced from a photo and a phone call. Then the site turns up. The lawn that looked flat drops 240 mm across nine metres. The footing hole hits an old slab at 300 mm. Where the steps land is soft fill from when someone re-did the drive. Each of those is a day, and none of them are in the number you gave. Padding by twenty per cent does not fix it: you lose the jobs you want and still do not cover the bad ones. Name the assumption, price the known, and put the unknown in writing as a rule the customer has already agreed to.

Measure from an actual level survey

Do not quote a deck from a tape and an eye. Take a rotary laser or a water level, shoot the ground at a grid of points across the footprint, and take the threshold height of the door you are decking up to. Ten minutes on site gives you the three numbers that drive the whole price:

• Fall across the footprint. Highest point to lowest. This sets post lengths and, past roughly 500–600 mm, it starts adding a step, a beam, and sometimes a guard rail.
• Threshold height. The finished deck usually sits a step below the door. That fixes the top of your joists, which fixes everything below it.
• Drop at the outer edge. This decides guarding. In Sweden, Boverket's rules require a rail once the fall height exceeds 0.5 m; the UK trigger is a drop over 600 mm. Either way it is a rail, posts, and a day you were not going to charge for.

Write the surveyed numbers into the quote. "Deck top at 1 470 mm above the low corner, measured 2026-07-14" is a defence. "Roughly level with the door" is an argument waiting to happen.

Ground conditions: price the risk, do not eat it

You cannot see under a lawn, so stop pretending the quote can. State the ground you priced for, and state what happens if it is not that. A workable pattern is three named scenarios, with one selected as the assumption:

Then one line in the quote: "Priced on Scenario A. If B or C is found once excavation starts, work stops, we photograph it, and it is handled as a variation at the rates below before we continue."

Naming the assumption is not a weakness in the quote. It is the thing that makes the rest of the number credible, and the customer comparing three quotes can see you are the one who thought about it.

Footing depth is a local number

Depth is set by frost, not preference. In Sweden, deck footings go to frost-free depth or the structure is built to tolerate movement, and that depth varies enormously by region — in the far south it is a fraction of what Norrland demands. Get the frost depth for the specific municipality rather than carrying one habit across the country, and state in the quote what depth you priced.

Where the survey suggests trouble, quote ground screws as an alternative. More per point, faster to install, and they take much of the excavation unknown off the table. Offer both and let the customer buy certainty.

Board grade and fasteners as customer-visible options

The biggest lever on a decking price is the board, and customers cannot read a timber spec. Quietly price the cheap board and you get blamed in three years when it cups. Quietly price the good board and you lose to someone who did not. So show the ladder: two or three options, each a full line with its own price.

• Pressure-treated softwood, above-ground grade. In the Nordic system that is NTR AB; anything in soil contact must be NTR A. Those Nordic Wood Preservation Council classes are already printed on your merchant's end tag. The UK equivalent question is Use Class 3 versus Use Class 4.
• Higher-grade or thermally modified timber. More stable, less movement, longer life, visibly better.
• Composite. Higher material cost, different fixing system, different labour, and a real substructure requirement.

Spell out the substructure with each board, because it is not the same job. Timber decking at 28 mm typically runs joists at 600 mm centres; thinner boards or a diagonal layout pull that towards 400 mm, which is more joists, more hangers, more hours. Composite systems often specify tighter again. If the customer picks a board without seeing that, the board choice quietly reprices your frame.

Fasteners are not a rounding error

Put the fastener spec on the page as a named choice:

• Hot-dip galvanised for ordinary inland work.
• A2 stainless where you want longevity and no staining.
• A4 stainless near the coast, in salt air, or with tannin-heavy timbers. Not upselling: it is the difference between a deck that looks clean at ten years and one that weeps black streaks at three.
• Hidden clip systems on their own line, because they are a different labour rate, not a material swap.

State the gap too. Kiln-dried boards move one way, wet boards the other. A stated 4–6 mm working gap is one sentence that ends a whole category of dispute.

Split labour and material on every line

In Sweden, the ROT deduction gives a private homeowner a tax credit of 30% of the labour cost of qualifying work on their own home, with an annual per-person ceiling shared with RUT. Material never counts. The ceiling amount changes, so check the current figure at Skatteverket rather than quoting from memory. Whether a specific deck qualifies depends on how it relates to the dwelling — an altan built onto the house is treated differently from a free-standing structure down the garden — so confirm the guidance before you promise a net price. Outside Sweden: the state pays part of the labour on domestic building work straight to the contractor, and the customer only ever sees the net figure. There is no exact UK, NZ or AU equivalent, but the discipline is worth copying.

That discipline is: every line carries its own labour and material figure. Not one lump at the bottom. Per line. Changing the board grade then moves the price honestly, the claim reconciles when the tax authority asks, and you can cost the job afterwards.

Doing that split by hand works right up until you have three options and a variation. Quoting software built for trades — OdinTask among them — calculates the ROT deduction inside the quote, shows the net price, and later generates the husarbete XML from the same lines, so the split you wrote at quote stage is the split you claim on.

The written ÄTA rule

ÄTA is the Swedish construction term for ändrings-, tilläggs- och avgående arbeten — changed work, additional work, work removed. Every trade has the concept; most quotes handle it with a shrug and a difficult phone call. Write the rule instead. Six lines, in the quote, above the signature:

1. Trigger. What counts as a variation. Ground other than Scenario A; anything hidden that could not be seen at survey; any change the customer asks for after signing.
2. Stop rule. Work on that element stops. Nothing extra gets done on goodwill and invoiced later.
3. Evidence. Photograph it on the spot, with the date. A photo from the hole beats any amount of explaining afterwards.
4. Pricing. Named hourly rate, material at cost plus a stated percentage, plant hire at cost — all printed in the original quote, so nobody negotiates rates standing in a hole.
5. Approval. Written approval before work resumes. An email or an in-app confirmation is fine. A nod across the garden is not.
6. Consumer notice. For private customers in Sweden, konsumenttjänstlagen requires you to contact the customer for instructions before doing additional work, and limits what you can charge when you have not. Konsumentverket and the standard Hantverkarformuläret set that expectation. UK and NZ consumer law lands in the same place: unagreed extras are hard to enforce.

The rule is not there to squeeze the customer. It is there so finding a slab at 300 mm is a ten-minute administrative event rather than a relationship problem lasting the rest of the job.

The carpenter decking quote structure, end to end

One page they read, one page they sign:

• Scope — footprint in m², surveyed levels and date, deck top height, steps, guarding yes/no with the reason.
• Foundation — method, number of points, priced depth, named ground scenario.
• Frame — joist size and centres, tied to the board choice.
• Board options — two or three, each with its own labour and material figure and substructure note.
• Fasteners — grade named and priced.
• Exclusions — spoil removal, obstruction breakout, drainage alterations, reinstating the lawn, tree roots, anything electrical.
• ÄTA rule — the six lines, with rates.
• Price — gross, deduction, net, per option.
• Validity — timber pricing moves; 30 days is normal and defensible.

Send it as a signable document, not a PDF on an email, so you have an audit trail against the exact version they agreed to. When the ground scenario changes in week two, the signed version is the only thing that matters.

Cost it back, per line

Afterwards, cost the deck against the quote line by line: footings against footings, boards against boards. Do three that way and you stop guessing.

A deck quote is not a number. It is a set of assumptions with a price attached and a rule for what happens when one of them is wrong. Write it that way and the ground stops being your problem. Try OdinTask free for 14 days and quote your next deck with the labour split, the options, and the variation rule already in the document.