A real single-storey rear extension quote, priced line by line from the architect's drawings — 99 items totalling £128,296.04 excluding VAT, in Surrey. Both the client-facing quote and the full bill of quantities behind it are below. Free, no email.
A full-width single-storey rear extension with a flat roof and lantern, a side extension housing a utility room and cloakroom WC, and a new entrance porch — priced to a plastered shell with electrics and plumbing throughout.
Each line states how much, in what unit, at what rate. The foundations section is £40,491 because of the volumes and depths on the drawings, not because it felt like a third of the job. That is what makes it checkable.
The client-facing PDF describes the work in sentences a homeowner can follow, while the Excel bill keeps the measured detail underneath. Same numbers, two audiences.
What was assumed rather than confirmed is stated, with the affected scope named. That is what lets a quote go out before every question is answered without hiding risk.
A quote a client can actually check has a measured quantity, a unit and a rate against every line, grouped into sections that add up to the tender sum. It should also state what is excluded and what has been assumed — foundation depth, ground conditions, who supplies what — because those are the things that move the price later. A single lump sum with no breakdown gives a client nothing to compare and gives you nothing to defend when the job changes.
Priced by hand from a full drawing set, a domestic extension typically takes a builder one to three evenings once the take-off is done. Waiting on a quantity surveyor usually means one to three weeks. QuoteWise produces a priced first pass from drawings with a median of about 12 minutes, which you then check and adjust rather than start from a blank page.
Most UK builders quote free for domestic work and absorb the cost, which is why quoting time is one of the biggest unpaid overheads in a small building business. Charging becomes more common where the pricing work is substantial — a full measured bill of quantities on a large refurbishment, or a tender that needs a quantity surveyor's involvement.
A take-off is the measurement stage: reading the drawings and extracting every quantity the job needs — square metres of brickwork, linear metres of skirting, numbers of lintels — before any price is applied. It is the part that takes the longest and the part that determines whether the quote is right, because a rate applied to a wrong quantity produces a confidently wrong number.
The quote is the client-facing document — sections, scope in plain English, and the tender sum. The bill of quantities is the working detail behind it: every measured line with its quantity, unit and rate. Both examples on this page are the same job in both forms, so you can see how one derives from the other.
Pricing a loft instead? See the loft conversion example →
Send us the drawings and we'll produce a bill like this one. Your first three quotes are free.