ElectricalBossPro Blog — Estimates & Quotes

Electrical Estimate Templates for the Jobs You Quote Every Week

Look back at the last twenty estimates your shop sent. Odds are that a handful of them look almost the same. Several EV charger installs with the same base line and the same two add-ons. A few panel upgrades with a surge protector. A generator install or two. If you are building each of those from scratch, you are doing the same work over and over. Estimate templates let you do it once.

Faster Quotes, Faster Jobs

The last guide, From Approved Electrical Estimate to Scheduled Job Without Retyping a Thing, showed how an approval turns into a job with no retyping. Templates take that same idea to the start of the process. If the end of the quote does not need retyping, the beginning should not either.

What a Template Is

An estimate template in ElectricalBossPro is a saved estimate you can start a new one from. It holds the lines you usually include, from your service list, with your prices and descriptions. When you start a new estimate from the template, those lines are already there. You adjust what is different about this house and send it.

Because templates are built from your service list, they stay consistent with the rest of your quoting. The service names on a template estimate are the same ones on the job and the invoice.

Templates Worth Building First

Start with the quotes you write most often. For many residential shops, that means:

• Standard EV charger install: the base install, a common add-on for a longer run, and a surge protector as an option.
• Panel upgrade: the upgrade, a whole-house surge protector and one dedicated circuit for a future charger.
• Whole-house generator: the install, the transfer switch or interlock, and the first year of maintenance if you sell it with the install.
• Recessed lighting: a per-fixture line plus a dimmer and an old-fixture removal line.
• Small-repair bundle: a service call plus the two or three small items that usually ride along.

Five templates can cover a large share of the bigger estimates many shops send. Add more as you notice repeats.

Adjusting a Template for the House

A template is a starting point, not a final quote. Every house is a little different. Change a quantity, drop a line the homeowner does not need, add a line the walkthrough turned up. If the service is priced off the property's square feet, fixtures or circuits, the measurement saved on that property feeds the price.

Fill in the equipment details for this house too. The template might include a standard 200-amp panel line, but the brand, model and location belong to the house in front of you.

Templates and Options

Templates work well when you like to offer choices. A panel upgrade template can carry three separate lines, the basic upgrade, the upgrade with surge protection and the upgrade with a circuit for a charger, so the homeowner sees the options every time. That approach is covered in Good, Better, Best: Offering Electrical Quote Options as Separate Line Items.

Keep the descriptions on each line clear about what is included. A template is copied many times, so a clear description there pays off on every estimate built from it.

Keeping Templates Current

Templates drift out of date when prices change or when you change how you sell a job. Review them when you review your service list. If you find yourself making the same edit to a template every time you use it, change the template. If a template has not been used in months, retire it.

It also helps to have one person in charge of templates. When everyone in the office edits them, they wander. When one person owns them, they stay clean.

A Template in Action

A homeowner sends a request through your website for a charger install. The office opens the request in Form Responses, calls back, and gets two photos by text: the panel in the garage and the wall where the charger will go. The estimate starts from the charger template. The base install and the surge protector option are already there. The office fills in the charger as equipment, adjusts the run line for this garage, and sends it. The whole quote takes a few minutes.

Who Benefits Most

Templates help everyone, but they help most in two situations. The owner-operator quoting at night after running calls all day gets estimates out in minutes instead of an hour. And a growing shop with a new office hire gets consistent quotes from day one, because the new person starts from the same templates as everyone else. For how templates fit into the rest of quoting, visit the ElectricalBossPro electrical estimate software page.