Should Contractors Charge for Estimates?

How to count it from last quarter’s estimates

The count takes one quarter of estimates from the field-service platform or the estimate folder, plus the calendar and the invoices. A spreadsheet and an afternoon are enough. One row per estimate:

• Date, customer, address, and where the lead came from: repeat customer, referral, website form, phone call, a paid lead service, a bid invitation.
• Job type and the estimate’s dollar amount.
• Who went, minutes of driving both ways, miles, and minutes on site, from the calendar or the vehicle’s GPS log if the company keeps one.
• Minutes spent pricing, writing and revising, as best the estimator can say.
• Whether the customer paid anything for the visit, and whether that money was credited to a job.
• Outcome: won, lost with the stated reason, or no answer. A won estimate carries its invoice number.

Minutes times the loaded hourly cost, plus miles times the company’s own cost per mile, is the cost of each visit. Total it by group (lead source, job type, distance, job size) and divide each group’s total by the jobs it won. That figure, cost per won job, answers the question. Illustrative example: a hypothetical company runs 120 free estimates in a quarter, each taking about two hours with the drive at a loaded $55 an hour, plus 25 miles at the IRS rate as a stand-in. That is about $129 a visit, $15,480 for the quarter and roughly 240 hours, about 18 a week. It wins 36 jobs. Split by source, the picture changes: 40 estimates for repeat customers and referrals won 20, about $258 of visits per job won; 30 commercial bids won 11, about $352 per job; 50 web requests for “a ballpark” won 5, about $1,290 per job. Every number here is a placeholder; the arithmetic is the same with the company’s own.

Which estimates stay free, which carry a fee or a credited trip charge

The count turns one company-wide question into a decision per group. Four choices cover it, and one company can use all four at once.

• Keep it free where the cost per won job is low and the visit is part of the sale: repeat customers, referrals, maintenance customers, and large jobs where the estimate is the sales call. Charging a customer who has paid the company for years to price the next job can cost more than the visit.
• Charge a fee where the visit is a service in its own right: finding a fault, a design with drawings, a detailed takeoff for a project the customer has not decided to do, a second or third revision after the scope changed. In service repair, a diagnostic fee credited toward the repair is the same idea, and its credit rule belongs in writing.
• Use a trip charge credited to the job where the cost per won job is high and the requests are early and vague: the “ballpark” web request, the far edge of the service area, the job below the company’s minimum. The customer pays a stated amount for the visit and gets it back as a credit on the job if they hire the company within a stated window. A customer ready to buy loses nothing; the visit costs money only to the customer who does not hire the company within the window.
• Replace the visit for the earliest requests: a price range by phone from photos or a short video, before anyone drives. It costs minutes instead of hours and saves the paid or credited visit for the customer who wants a firm number.

Whatever the choice, it is one written rule per group, so the person booking the call does not decide case by case. Start with the group that has the highest cost per won job, run the new rule for one quarter, and compare it with the quarter before: estimates booked, visits made, jobs won, cost per won job. A fee that cuts visits and keeps the jobs has done its work; a fee that cuts the jobs too is the signal to go back.

Is it legal to charge for an estimate, and what must be disclosed

The texts quoted below do not forbid a fee for an estimate. What they ask for, in different words, is that the customer is told the fee, and any condition attached to a “free” offer, up front, before anything is charged. This section describes the public texts as of October 22, 2026, and is a summary, not legal advice. Rules differ by state, trade and city; ask the company’s attorney before changing what the website, the trucks or the booking script say.

• The FTC’s Guide Concerning Use of the Word “Free” and Similar Representations, 16 CFR 251.1(c), says the terms on which a “Free” item depends should be set forth “clearly and conspicuously at the outset of the offer” and “in close conjunction with the offer.” A footnote reached by an asterisk next to the offer “is not regarded as making disclosure at the outset.” “Free estimates*” on a truck, with “*with any repair” in small print below, is close to the example in that paragraph.
• The same guide, paragraph (g), says: “If a product or service usually is sold at a price arrived at through bargaining, rather than at a regular price, it is improper to represent that another product or service is being offered ‘Free’ with the sale.” A contractor whose job prices are negotiated customer by customer may be selling that way; whether a “free estimate with the job” falls under it is a question for counsel. Paragraph (i) adds that calling it a “gift,” “given without charge” or “bonus” does not fix a misleading offer.
• Wisconsin’s home improvement rule, ATCP 110.02(5), bars a seller from offering or advertising “any gift, free item, or bonus without fully disclosing the terms or conditions of the offer, including expiration date of the offer and when the gift, free item, or bonus will be given.” Its definition of home improvement on residential and other non-commercial property, ATCP 110.01(2), names remodeling, repairing, painting, landscaping, fences and “heating and air conditioning equipment,” among others.
• California’s appliance repair law, Business and Professions Code §9844, says a service dealer “may charge a reasonable fee for services provided in determining the nature of the malfunction in preparation of a written estimate for repair,” and “shall advise the customer in writing of the amount of the fee” before a repair in the home, before taking the item out of the home, or when the shop accepts it. Section 9801 defines the appliances it covers, including a “residential portable furnace, or room air-conditioner.”
• California’s auto repair law, §9884.9, says: “No work shall be done and no charges shall accrue before authorization to proceed is obtained from the customer.”

The cautious practice is to state the amount of the visit, what it covers and any condition on a credit in writing before the appointment is booked, and keep that record. Once a group of estimates carries a fee, the word “free” comes off every place that still promises it to that group: the website, the online listings, the truck, the voicemail greeting. Consult fees raise the same questions, and the med spa version of this question reads the same FTC guide for a fee credited toward treatment.

How to word the estimate fee so the customer still books

The fee is stated by the person who books the visit, on the first call and before the time is set, not by the estimator at the door. A fee first heard at the door can feel like a trap; the same fee heard while booking is a choice the customer makes. The script has four parts, in this order, and the word “free” is not in it.

• What the customer gets: “Our estimator comes out, measures, and leaves you a written price for the whole job.”
• The amount and when it is paid: “The visit is [amount], paid when we book it.”
• The credit and its window, if there is one: “If you hire us within [30] days, the [amount] comes off the job.”
• The no-charge alternative, if the company offers one: “If you’d rather start with a range, text us a few photos and we’ll call you back with one at no charge.”

The same words go into the booking confirmation by text or email, so the condition is in writing before the visit. A caller who pushes back gets one plain reason, once: the visit takes a trained person’s time and a truck, and the fee comes back as a credit on the job. Whether a caller who declined was a lost job or an estimate the company never needed to make is what the next quarter’s count answers.

Who records what, and what to check every week

A fee policy without a record turns into a fee charged by some people some of the time. Each step gets one named owner:

• The person booking: the estimate’s group, whether the fee was quoted, paid or waived, and the reason for any waiver, written on the appointment.
• The estimator: drive and site time, and the outcome within a week: won, lost with the reason, or a dated next step.
• The office: the credit as its own line on the job invoice, and credits past their window closed out under the written policy.
• The owner: a fifteen-minute read every Friday of estimates booked by group, visits that happened, fees quoted, collected and waived with the reasons, and jobs won from last month’s estimates; once a month, cost per won job by group against the quarter’s count.

A fee changes which estimates get made. It does nothing for estimates that go quiet after the visit, which are a separate leak with their own fix: a named owner, a dated follow-up and an outcome on every open estimate.

When to keep every estimate free, and where the Review fits

Keep estimates free when the count says so: if cost per won job is low in every group, the visits are doing their work. If estimators have open time and nothing paid to fill it, a free visit costs less than it seems. Where a commercial buyer invites several contractors to bid and pays none of them, a fee may simply mean no invitation. And if estimates go out and nobody follows up, charging for the visit fixes the wrong end.

If the estimates turn out to be one of several places where money slips between the first call and a signed job, the Revenue Review counts them under the Inquiry → Quote hand-off. From the company’s own estimate export, calendar and invoices, it rebuilds the cost per won job by lead source and lists the estimates with no outcome recorded. It does not set the company’s prices and gives no legal advice. It takes two weeks, and the written report is the company’s to keep.

For a company running a few dozen estimates a quarter, the count above, done in-house, may be all it takes. Otherwise, the next step is a free 20-minute call, where we say whether the Review is worth it, including when it is not.