Field Guides / Pricing

The profitable quote checklist

A profitable video quote has four sections: pre-production, production, post-production, and a production company fee of 15 to 30 per cent, calculated on the subtotal plus a 10 per cent contingency line. The inclusions are stated, the payment terms are visible and there's one clear next step. Run the checklist below against every quote before it leaves. Most video businesses are missing at least one section, and it's usually worth about 15 per cent of the job.

Why does a quote that looked fine still lose money?

A quote loses money when work that took real hours never makes it onto the page. The client can't pay for what they can't see, so the business absorbs it.

The single most common profitability leak in a video business isn't the day rate. It's the structure of the quote. Most owners quote the shoot day at one number and the edit day at another, and everything that isn't a day on set or in the suite goes unpriced: the planning calls, the scripting, the scheduling, the client management, the revisions wrangling. A typical timeline says "ideation, key messaging, planning, pre-interviews" and the pricing table says nothing about any of it.

The fix is structural, and you make it once. The reasoning behind each section, and a real budget line by line, live in Anatomy of a Profitable Quote. This guide is the list you run against the page before you press send.

How to check a quote before it goes out: the method, step by step

The method is a pass down the page, top to bottom, in the order the client reads it. Eight checks, every quote.

1. Confirm the client, the job and the outcome are at the top. Right client name, job name, job number and date. Then what the film is for, who watches it and where it runs. A recruitment film for nurses who'll see it on their phones is a different job from the same footage cut for a careers expo screen. If the client couldn't tell you, that conversation is the first deliverable, and it's had before a number is written down.
2. Check the three working sections are present and each one is priced. Pre-production as scoped labour with days against roles (recce, scripting, interview prep, planning calls, crew and location booking). Production as crew, kit, travel and the shoot days, with anything bought in for the job at its charged rate rather than hidden inside a bundle. Post-production as edit, grade, sound mix and delivery. If you can identify the person and count their hours, it gets a line.
3. Check the contingency is its own line at 10 per cent of the subtotal. One sentence next to it saying it's only billed if it's used, because something always moves.
4. Check the production company fee is a visible line below the production cost. It's 15 to 30 per cent of the production cost (subtotal plus contingency), labelled as a production company fee, never as "admin". 20 per cent is the default: towards 15 for retainer and repeat clients, towards 30 for new clients, tight turnarounds, or jobs with more unknowns. Never introduce the fee below 15 per cent.
5. Check the inclusions and the variation triggers are stated. How many revision rounds are in (two, unless the quote says otherwise), what a round is, and what triggers a variation: a new location, new interviewees, a change of brief after script approval, or a third round of changes. Nothing on that list should surprise anyone at invoice time.
6. Check it fits on one page in plain words. The price and the payment terms visible without scrolling, and one clear next step to accept: reply to confirm, or sign the attached.
7. Check the maths, in order. Subtotal of the three working sections, contingency at 10 per cent of the subtotal, production cost (subtotal plus contingency), the fee as a percentage of the production cost, then the total.
8. Log it before you stand up. A new row in your pipeline tracker with the value, the stage set to Quoted, a next action and a date. Same sitting, not later. A quote with no follow-up date is a quote drifting towards no.

What goes on the quote page, in order

The quote page carries the three working sections, then the subtotal, the contingency, the production cost, the production company fee and the total, then the inclusions, the terms and the next step, on one page. Here's the skeleton. Fill the brackets and delete nothing.

The day rate that goes into each section is built once, from your real overheads and the days you can actually sell. That method is in How to price a video project, and the Pricing Calculator runs it for you.

A worked example

Here's the checklist run on a draft that fails it, in round numbers: a two-day shoot for an existing client, a scripted interview piece and a social cut. The draft prices production and post, and nothing else.

The checklist catches three missing lines at steps 2, 3 and 4: no pre-production (the recce, the script and the interview prep were going to happen anyway), no contingency, and no production company fee. Rebuilt in house order, with the fee at the 20 per cent default for an existing client:

The $4,380 gap is this draft's own arithmetic, from three missing lines; the per-job benchmark in the rule of thumb below is a separate figure, for a quote missing only the fee line. The full build, from the day rate up, is in How to price a video project.

Restructuring the quote this way was the first thing Andrew Fowler at Lux Films in London put in place when he joined the VBA. That one change added six figures to his annual profit.

The mistakes that undo it

A quote fails the checklist in four familiar ways.

• Pre-production charged as an "admin" percentage. One small percentage line covering both the planning labour and the company overheads. The labour ends up free and the margin line doesn't exist. This is the most common leak we see.
• No production company fee at all. The overheads still exist; they come out of your shoot and edit margins instead.
• Pass-through costs with no markup. Crew and kit bought in for the job, invisible inside a bundled price, passed on at cost.
• One bundled number with no build-up behind it. A single figure can work for some buyers, but only if the four sections sit behind it internally.

The rule of thumb for checking a quote

Nothing leaves until it's been run against the checklist. The benchmark: on a typical quote missing the fee line, restructuring recovers around 15 per cent per job. On $250K of annual project revenue, that's roughly $37,500 a year for one template change.

Hold yourself accountable

Which of these have you taken on or put in place recently?

• Your quote template has pre-production, production, post-production and a production company fee as separate priced sections.
• Your last quote carried a 10 per cent contingency as its own line, before the fee.
• Your fee was calculated on the production cost, not the subtotal.
• Your last quote opened with what the film is for, who watches it and where it runs.

Your one move this week

What's the one thing you can commit to implementing this week? If you're not sure, start here.

Pull your last three quotes and run each one against the checklist above. Mark what's missing. Then rebuild your quote template from the skeleton, so the next quote starts with every line already on the page. New clients get the new structure immediately. Existing clients get it on their next quote, framed as formalising the producing role you already carry, applied to new work and never retroactively.

One thing executed every week creates 50 strategic moves a year.

Related tools and guides. Anatomy of a Profitable Quote (the reasoning behind each section and a real budget, line by line), How to price a video project (the day rate that goes into the sections), Pricing Calculator, Charging for the invisible work, How many revision rounds to include, The scope checklist, Drop the scope, not the price.