By Mindy Williams

Creating estimates for jobs is time consuming, tedious and absolutely necessary for maintaining a good working relationship with your clients. The problems that arise in a job without an estimate can range from forgotten tasks and missed costs to expensive underbilling and lost clients. Taking the time to plan a job--including time and costs-- will ultimately result in happier clients and more profits for you.

An estimate is more than just good business. From the printed estimate, your client should have a clear idea of what will be done on the job and how much he can expect it to cost. You may even choose to show deadlines that need to be met and how much time each task requires. With most clients, you probably have some sort of contract indicating your terms and conditions, but it may well be worth having a simplified version of that extensive agreement printed on your estimates.

The more you disclose before the job begins, the less chance there is for misunderstandings that cost you money, a client, or both.

Protect yourself

Besides a commitment to the client, the estimate is also a commitment from the client to you. Your client's signature indicates that he understands the deal and agrees to it. When the client then calls for changes, additions, and revisions, you can issue change orders to the original estimate and then willingly do whatever work is required without having to worry about being able to bill for it. Neither the client nor you have to deal with unpleasant surprises.

Know your costs

Budgeting your costs in advance and estimating what you are going to charge your client helps you make informed decisions as the job progresses, too. Periodically check a job to see what costs have been incurred against the estimate. Agency software can help you by making it easy to review estimate amounts and costs-to-date for jobs and by automatically warning you as you approach preset limits. The system should also be able to determine if a job or task has been approved beyond the estimate stage so that no work is done without authorization.

Continued on the next page