- Enquiry
- Quote
- Agree
- Work
- Invoice
- Paid
Site Visits
A site visit is treated as the cost of quoting. It is also the only opportunity to see the conditions you are about to price, meet the person who will pay, and create a dated record of how things stood before you touched anything.
For a software-side reference alongside this discussion of pre-work decisions, contracts, and small-business administration, Monitask has this resource.
Three of those four are usually wasted.
What the visit is for
Pricing, obviously. Access, distances, what is already there, what is in the way.
Assessing the customer. Everything the entity checks cannot tell you — whether decisions get made, whether there is a second decision-maker who has not appeared, whether the brief is settled or still moving.
Establishing the starting condition. The state of the walls, the floor, the existing installation, the damage that was already there. This is the part nobody records and the part that becomes contested.
And deciding whether to bid at all. Several of the signals worth declining on are visible on site and nowhere else.
What to record
Photographs, dated, of everything you might later be accused of.
Existing damage. Scratched worktops, cracked tiles, a stained ceiling, a door that already did not close. Five minutes with a phone, and it removes an entire category of end-of-job dispute.
The conditions you are pricing against. The route in, the state of the surface, the existing wiring or pipework where visible.
And anything you are told. "The tiles are arriving Thursday", "the electrician has done his bit", "we'll have cleared the room". Each of those is an assumption in your price, and each should be written into the quote as one.
Store them against the job, not loose in a camera roll. A photograph you cannot find is a photograph you did not take.
The questions worth asking on site
"Who else is involved in the decision?" The absent partner, the landlord, the head office. Finding out on site is free; finding out after quoting costs a revision and a delay.
"When do you need it done, and what happens if that moves?" Distinguishes a deadline from a preference.
"Has anyone else quoted?" Not to compete on price but to learn what was specified — a customer comparing three quotes for different scopes is a customer who will compare on the number alone.
"Is there anything you're worried about?" The single most productive question available, and the answer frequently identifies the thing that would otherwise have become the dispute.
Charging for visits
Divisive, and it depends on your market.
Free visits are normal in most consumer trades and are the cost of winning work.
Charging is defensible where the visit is substantial — a survey, a diagnosis, a design element — and where the visit itself has value to the customer regardless of who does the work.
The middle position that works: free for a straightforward look and quote, charged where diagnosis is involved, with the charge credited against the job if it proceeds. Say which applies before attending, because the argument about a call-out fee after the fact is disproportionate to the sum.
The visit that saves the job
Where the conditions are materially different from what was described on the phone.
This is common. A "small rewire" that is a full house, a "quick repair" behind a fitted unit, access that requires scaffolding nobody mentioned.
The right response is to say so on site, not to absorb it into a price and hope.
"This is a bigger job than it sounded — I'll quote it properly, but I want to flag now that it's not the number you had in mind." That sentence, delivered in person, is the cheapest expectation-setting available and it prevents the quote arriving as a shock.
What not to do on site
Do not give a figure.
A number said aloud while standing in somebody's kitchen becomes the price, regardless of what the written quote says afterwards, and the difference between the two becomes the argument.
"I'll work it out properly and send it over today" is the answer, and sending it the same day is what makes it acceptable.
Do not start work. Even small things. A job that begins before the quote is accepted has no agreed price, and that is the position everything here exists to avoid.
The second visit
On anything substantial, go twice.
The first visit prices it. The second confirms what you assumed — after the customer has cleared the room, after the other trade has finished, after the thing you could not see has been exposed.
Most suppliers skip this and absorb the difference, which is the same unpaid work that appears everywhere else on this site in a different form.
Where a second visit is not practical, write the assumptions into the quote explicitly and state that the price is subject to them holding. That is the cheap version of the same protection.
What the visit tells the customer
It works in both directions, and this is worth using deliberately.
A supplier who looks properly, asks questions and takes photographs is visibly doing a job rather than guessing at one, and that impression carries into how the quote is read.
A supplier who glances round for four minutes and quotes from the doorway invites the customer to treat the number as approximate — which they then do, at the end, when the final figure differs.
The visit is the first evidence of how you work, and most of the effort in it costs nothing.
The short version
- A visit prices the job, assesses the customer, records the starting condition, and decides whether to bid — three of which are usually wasted
- Photograph existing damage and the conditions you are pricing against, and store them against the job rather than loose
- Write down what you are told, because each statement is an assumption in your price and belongs in the quote
- Four questions: who else decides, whether the deadline is real, who else has quoted, and what they are worried about
- Charging is defensible where diagnosis is involved; say which applies before attending
- Never give a figure on site and never start work before the quote is accepted
For broader background on pre-work decisions, contracts, and small-business administration, see Acas.