First Quote, No Idea What Markup to Add? The Shelf Bay
2026-10-30
The customer is standing in the doorway with two mugs of tea. The cat is asleep on the radiator. You are kneeling by an alcove with a tape measure, and she says it in the friendliest voice possible:
"So, roughly what are we looking at? Just a ballpark."
The alcove is 1.9 metres wide. You have measured it three times. You know what the boards will cost, more or less. You know the brackets, the screws, the paint.
What you do not know is the number that goes on top of them. It is your first job as a self-employed carpenter, and the question is already in your mouth before you can swallow it.
The pause nobody sees
This is the part nobody puts on a business card. You are not scared of the work. You could build these shelves half asleep.
You are scared of the sentence that comes after "it'll be about..."
Say too much and she nods politely, then never calls again. Say too little and you spend a week sanding for less than you earned at your old job. And you will smile all the way through it, because you said the number yourself.
So you do what many people do in this moment. You add up the timber in your head, you add a bit "for the faff", and you pick something that sounds fair. You say it out loud. She says, "Lovely, that works."
That should feel like winning. It feels like a small stone dropping into your stomach.
What the stone is made of
It is not really about the markup. It is about the quiet questions behind it.
Did that number cover the second trip to the supplier? The cost of the paint you will have to buy as a whole tin for a small job? The hour you spend driving there? The evening you spend writing it up?
You do not know. And you will not know until the job is done, when the receipts are in your jacket pocket and the money is already in the account, and every answer is too late to change.
The next day you stand in the timber aisle. You have a receipt in one hand and your phone in the other, and you try to remember whether the brackets were in the quote or whether you just assumed they were. Half of you says it is probably fine. The other half has seen "probably fine" turn into a loss before.
It does not feel like you are running a business. It feels like you are guessing in a van.
The call to a friend
At lunch you ring someone who has been doing this for years. He laughs kindly and says, "Everyone's first one is a guess. Mine was too."
Then he says something that stays with you. It is not a number. He says the guess is not the problem. The problem is not being able to look back at it afterwards.
You think about that on the drive home. If the quote lived somewhere you could open, with the materials, the receipts, your hours and what you charged, then the next quote would not be a guess. It would be a slightly better guess. And the one after that would be better again.
Nobody hands you that on day one. You build it a job at a time, but only if each job leaves a trace you can read.
A different Wednesday
Picture the same alcove a few months from now.
The customer asks the same friendly question. You still measure three times. But you do not feel the stone this time.
You open one page on your phone or laptop. The materials are there, each with the price you actually paid. Your time is there. Your own wage is in it, as a real line and not an afterthought. You can see what is left once everything is counted.
You say a number in a steady voice. It does not come out apologetic. If she says it is a bit high, you have something real to talk about. You can say what is in it, or what could come out, and you are not defending a feeling.
A week later the shelves are up. The receipts have been dropped into one place as you went, not into the glove box to be found in January. You can see what the job really earned. And you can see whether the invoice has been paid or whether it is time to send a calm reminder.
Then you close the laptop at a sensible hour, and the evening is yours.
For the next first quote
Nothing here means you did it wrong. Everyone starts with a guess. What changes things is giving your guesses a home, so they can turn into knowing.
If you recognise yourself in the alcove, we made Quote It Right – Job Quote, Materials & Margin Sheet. It is an Excel quote builder for tradespeople. You price jobs on site, track materials and receipts, see your real margin and who still owes you. It opens with a short "Start here" sheet and some sample data, so you can see how it works before you enter your own job.
It is a tool for organising your numbers. The decisions about what to charge stay yours, and it does not replace a tax professional. If it does not help, you can have a full refund within 30 days, no questions asked.
An illustrative story, written with AI assistance.