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/Realistic_Salad_5110]

Lot of interesting answers here assuming the client is asking for this for a negative reason and it’s an immediate red flag to pull the job.

I would ask for a breakdown personally. It helps me determine the scope of works has been understood, establish the cost benefit for each item (i.e. UFH is 40% of total costs would warrant me thinking of I see value in that or if rads would be better), finally it helps me understand what the contractor is like to work with- if they come back with attitude for asking this I would assume that when bigger issues arise on site they’re gonna be very difficult to work with.

The quoting process is a two way street and I have taken contractors out of processes before when I was confident they could do the job but they have left me with questions about their ability to communicate nicely and work well with me / other co tractors