Charging for Quotes and Site Visits: When It Pays Off

Charging for quotes and site visits pays off when the visit is real work (fault-finding, measuring, a proper survey) and when your win rate is low enough that free visits cost more than the won jobs earn. It does not pay off when the visit is short, local, and you win better than one in three. The test is arithmetic, not principle: work out the fully loaded cost of one visit, divide by your win rate, and compare that with the gross profit on an average job. If quoting costs more than the job earns, charge a fee, say so in writing before you book it, and credit it against the invoice when they order. If it costs less, keep it free and treat it as marketing spend you chose deliberately.

What a site visit actually costs you

Most owners price the visit at zero because no invoice is raised. Travel time is the most expensive uncompensated line in a small trades firm, and it never shows up in the accounts as its own number.

Use your loaded cost per hour, not your sell rate. Loaded cost is wages plus employer contributions, plus the van, tools, insurance, phone, software and your own admin time, divided by the hours you can actually charge out in a year. An example at 45 an hour:

Substitute your own currency and rate. The shape does not change: a quoted job you never win costs you the better part of half a working day.

When charging for quotes and site visits pays off: the break-even test

A free quote is marketing when it buys work cheaper than any other channel would. It is a loss when it does not. You need two numbers: your win rate and the gross profit on an average job (the invoice minus materials and the labour to do it, before overhead).

Say the average job is £900 and gross profit is £495. Carry the £141 visit cost through:

Break-even sits at roughly one in three and a half. Above it, free quoting is a cheap way to buy work. Below it, you are paying customers to consider you, and every extra enquiry makes it worse. When quoting loses money, growth in enquiries is not good news.

Two levers move the same maths without a fee: raise the win rate, or cut the cost per visit. Charging is the third lever, not the first.

Quote, survey, diagnosis: three different things, only two are free

Lumping these together is why the conversation gets awkward. Separate them and the fee justifies itself.

• A quote is sales. The customer knows what they want, you price it. Free is defensible.
• A survey is measuring, load calculations, options, checking the board. It has an output the customer could hand to someone else. That is work.
• A diagnosis is fault-finding. The customer does not know what is wrong. You find out. The finding is the deliverable. Doing it free and hoping to earn it back on the repair is the worst deal in the trade.

Almost nobody argues with paying for diagnosis once you name it as diagnosis. Plenty of people argue with paying for a quote. Charge where the value is obvious, and give away what is genuinely sales.

How to set the fee, and why it should come off the invoice

Price the fee to cover the visit, not to profit from it. If a visit costs you £141, a fee of £95 to £150 is honest and explainable. Round it. Publish it.

Then credit it in full against the invoice if they go ahead. This is the whole trick, and it does three things:

• It removes the objection. Nobody is paying extra, they are paying early.
• It filters. People shopping five contractors for a number will not pay it. People with a real job will. Your win rate goes up, which is the point.
• It makes the fee feel like a deposit rather than a toll, which is roughly what it is.

Sensible carve-outs: waive it inside a small radius, for existing customers and service-agreement holders, and on jobs over a threshold where the margin swallows it. Keep the rules written down so you are not negotiating them at the door.

One Swedish detail: the ROT deduction covers 30% of the labour cost on qualifying work at a private home, with an annual per-person ceiling shared with RUT (check the current amount at Skatteverket). Do not assume a standalone inspection or quoting fee qualifies when no work follows. Credit the fee against a real job and it simply reduces the invoice, with the normal labour line carrying the deduction.

What the law requires you to say before you turn up

The rule everywhere: you cannot charge a consumer for something they never agreed to. A fee sprung at the kitchen table is not enforceable, and it costs you the review as well as the money. Say it before booking, in writing, in the message where you confirm the time.

Sweden

The Consumer Services Act (konsumenttjänstlagen, 1985:716) governs work on property and buildings for consumers. Two things matter. If you give a price estimate rather than a fixed price, the final price may not exceed the estimate by more than 15% unless something else was agreed. And if no price was ever agreed, the consumer owes only a reasonable price, which means arguing about it afterwards from a weak position. An unmentioned visit fee falls straight into that hole. Konsumentverket publishes the Hantverkarformuläret standard contract, a free and sensible place to put the fee in writing.

UK and the EU

A contract signed at the customer's home is an off-premises contract, even if they invited you. That triggers a 14-day right to cancel and a list of information you must give in a durable form before they are bound, including the total price and any extra charges. If the customer wants you to start inside those 14 days, they must expressly request it, and you need that request recorded. Skip it and a cancelling customer can walk away owing nothing for work already done. This is the most expensive piece of paperwork tradespeople ignore.

New Zealand and Australia

Here the logic turns on who initiated contact. Cooling-off applies to uninvited sales: five working days under New Zealand's Fair Trading Act for an uninvited direct sale, ten business days for an unsolicited consumer agreement under the Australian Consumer Law. If the customer rang and asked you to come, that regime generally does not bite. The disclosure principle still does.

Business customers are a different world. No cooling-off, no consumer protections, more freedom to charge for survey time.

Wording that actually works

Short, calm, no apology. On the phone or in the booking reply:

Happy to come and look at it. The visit is £95, which covers the travel and a written quote with a fixed price. If you go ahead, the £95 comes straight off the invoice, so it costs you nothing extra. If you would rather not, send me a few photos and I will give you a price range for free.

For fault-finding:

Fault-finding is £120 for the first hour, because finding the fault is the job. You get a written report of what is wrong either way. If you want it fixed there and then, that hour is included in the repair.

Three rules. Name the number first, never after the objection. Always offer a free alternative, so it reads as a choice rather than a barrier. Never say "unfortunately".

Cheaper than a fee: triage before you drive

A fee is the blunt instrument. The sharper one is not driving at all. Before you add a fee, try:

• An intake form that asks the qualifying questions. Photos, address, what is there now, when they need it, whether they have other quotes. Half of the bad visits disqualify themselves at this step.
• Published price bands. "Consumer unit change, typical range X to Y." People shopping for a number get it without costing you a morning, and the ones who book are pre-sold on the range.
• A minimum job value and a radius. Written down, applied without discussion.
• A ten-minute video call. Ten minutes instead of three hours, and it closes surprisingly well.
• Batching. Two visits in the same postcode on the same afternoon nearly halves the travel cost of each.

This is where a system earns its keep. In OdinTask the embeddable enquiry form does the triage before the job reaches your diary, and the quote goes out with a fixed price, any deduction calculated for the customer, and e-signature on it, so the gap between the visit and the yes is hours instead of a week. Shortening that gap moves your win rate, which moves the break-even more than any fee does.

A policy you can actually run

1. Measure your win rate for one quarter. Count quotes sent and jobs won. No estimating.
2. Work out your loaded cost per hour and the real cost of one visit, travel and quote-writing included.
3. Run the break-even. Better than one in three and a half, keep quoting free and fix your radius instead.
4. Worse than that, split quoting from diagnosis and charge for diagnosis first.
5. Set the fee near cost, publish it, and credit it against the invoice on every order.
6. Put it in the booking confirmation in writing, every time, before the visit, along with the cancellation rights if you are in the UK or the EU.
7. Re-measure after a quarter. Fewer visits, higher win rate, same revenue means it worked. That is the result you want, not more enquiries.

The firms that get burned are not the ones that charge. They are the ones that charge without telling anyone first, and the ones that never worked out what a free visit was costing them. Do the sum before you take a position.