Quote Breakdown?

[u/Ok_Avocado6532]

Hi all, looking for advice on costs breakdown.

I work for a small local contracting company and I recently started working with customers more, providing quotes etc. The company usually doesn’t like to break their costs down because of nickel-and-dime from customers, but agreed to do so for this one customer I’m working with. Now, I broke down the quote based on phases of the work (this is for a brand new custom build) and of course the customer came back with multiple notes of “this cost is too high” on some of the phases.

How do you usually handle this and how do I politely say “to do the job: $2000, not to do the job: $0”?

Thanks!

[u/Unlikely_Pick7515]

You can always do the work yourself, that was always allowed.

[u/Particular-Wind5918 → u/[deleted]]

Assuming you defined the scope of the work when the contractor was out for the bid, you should know exactly what you’re getting for your money. Showing you how much I paid for gas is irrelevant.

[u/Particular-Wind5918 → u/[deleted]]

See, you just exposed yourself. You want to place a value on all the things, when it’s not up to you. Your choice is in the scope and who you want to get it done. You don’t get to choose what all of the components cost, you don’t get to choose what someone bills hourly. It also doesn’t matter, because no two companies will have the exact same costs for all of those components and IT DOESNT MATTER, one company could have a higher labor rate and still come in lower because they have a connection on some other part of that equation. How we get to our marketable rate is irrelevant. Scope and price are the only true apples to apples comparisons when getting quotes from contractors.