Quotation template: every section, and what to write in it

A header with your business name, address and registration or tax number. The client's name and address. A quotation number, an issue date and a validity date. Then the itemised offer: description, quantity, unit price and line total, followed by subtotal, discount, tax and grand total.

Close with terms — payment schedule, lead time, what is excluded — and how to accept. A quote that does not say how to say yes gets replied to with a question instead of an approval.

Write scope as deliverables rather than activities: 'three landing page designs, two revision rounds' says more than 'design work'. Exclusions matter just as much — name the things you are not doing.

For validity, a plain sentence is enough: this quotation is valid for 14 days from the issue date. For payment, state the split and the method rather than leaving 'terms to be agreed'.

A spreadsheet or word processor template has no numbering, no record of what you sent, and no protection against a formula that silently stops summing a new row. The tenth version is never the one you meant to send.

Generating the document instead means the number is sequential, the totals are calculated, and the version your client is looking at is the one in your account.

The point of a good quotation is that it becomes an invoice with no retyping. In VegaPal an accepted quotation converts into a tax invoice, keeping the items and client details intact.

That also means the offer and the bill can be compared later, which is useful when someone asks why the final figure differs.