What's Actually In A Complete Electrical Quote (The Line Items Sparkies Forget)
The seven line items every complete electrical quote should carry, from materials and labour to testing, contingency and GST. A checklist for Australian sparkies.
Most quotes that lose money aren’t wrong on the big numbers. They’re missing the small ones. A forgotten testing line here, no contingency there, overhead left out entirely, and a quote that looked profitable on paper finishes square or behind.
A complete electrical quote carries seven things. Miss any of them and you’re funding it yourself. Here’s the full list.
1. Materials
Every cable, conduit, fitting, fixture and switchgear item. The trick is to break materials out by system, lighting, power, data, mechanical, so nothing hides. A loose lump sum is where forgotten fittings live.
Price materials with a margin on top, not at cost. You carry the procurement time, the inventory risk, the warranty admin and the credit terms. 15-25% on materials is standard.
2. Labour
Labour by task, not a single “labour” number. Rough-in, fit-off, terminations, testing, plus the bits everyone forgets, travel, setup, pack-down and cleanup. If you’re not confident on your hours yet, how to estimate labour hours walks through the method.
3. Overhead
Your business costs money to run whether you’re on the tools or not. Vehicle, insurance, tools, phone, software, admin. For most electrical contractors that overhead lands around 12-18% of job cost, and it has to be built into every quote. Leave it out and it comes straight out of your profit.
4. Margin
Profit is a line item, not what’s left over. Set a target margin and work the price back from it. And remember markup and margin are not the same number, a 30% markup is only a 23% margin. If that sentence made you pause, read markup vs margin before your next quote.
5. Contingency
A small buffer for the things you can’t see from the front door. Damaged existing wiring, dodgy earthing, access problems, surprises behind the wall. On renovation and older-building work especially, a contingency line is the difference between absorbing a surprise and arguing about it.
6. Prelims and extras
The non-physical stuff that still costs you:
- Permits and council fees
- Testing and certification — this is mandatory, chargeable work, not an optional add-on
- Equipment hire
- Consumables
- Supervision on bigger jobs
Testing and cert is the one that gets dropped most. You quote the install time and forget the regulatory step you’re legally required to do. Itemise it.
7. GST
Add GST last, once, on the total. Keep every input price GST-exclusive while you build the quote, then add 10% at the end. Mixing GST-inclusive and exclusive prices through the quote is how the final number ends up wrong.
The order it goes together
Direct cost (materials + labour) → add overhead → add margin → add GST. In that order. A worked example:
| Step | Amount |
|---|---|
| Materials + labour | $1,671 |
| + 30% overhead | $2,172 |
| + 50% markup | $3,258 |
| + 10% GST | $3,584 |
Build the same structure into every quote and nothing falls through the cracks. That’s exactly what a proper quoting system enforces, and what we drill in the Electrical Estimating Course so the full list becomes automatic.
A quote isn’t complete because it has a price on it. It’s complete when every line that costs you money is on the page.