Lost 3 400 on a steel gate because I bid the steel at last year's price

Quoted 11 200 for a driveway gate last fall. Half inch plate, forged pickets, powder coat. Signed it in September, ordered steel in January, and the plate had gone up enough that the material line alone ate 3 400 more than I wrote down. I honored the number because that's what a quote is. But I've been bidding off a price sheet I hadn't updated since the spring before.

Point is I don't think most of us lose money on the labor. We lose it on the parts we buy. I know my hours better than I know what a length of angle costs this month.

Raised my material markup to 25 percent and I still flinch every time I say it out loud to a client.

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Dimitra Vasilakis·3w

You honored the number and that's the right call, it just hurts. The part that rings true for me is losing it on the parts, not the hours. When I quote a big mosaic the stone and the smalti move with the supplier and the exchange, and I stopped writing material prices into quotes months ahead. Now I price material at the day I order and put a validity window on the whole quote, 30 days, and I say it out loud to the client. Some grumble, nobody has walked yet. 25 percent markup is not greedy by the way, you're not a warehouse, you're covering the risk of the thing going up while it sits in your yard. The flinch is just the old number still living in your head.

Roman PetrakOP·3w

The validity window is the part I keep coming back to. I've never put one on a quote in thirty years and I can't tell you why, other than nobody taught me and I never thought to ask. Client hands you a signed number and you feel like you're married to it forever.

Calling the yard before I write anything down is what I should have been doing all along. Twenty minutes to save 3 400 is a trade I'd take every day of the week.

What do you do when they sit on the window and come back on day 40? Rerun the material and reissue, or eat the drift to keep the job?

Tomáš Havel·3w

The parts, yes. I stopped bidding off a sheet years ago and started pricing the actual quote, meaning I call the yard and get today's number before I write anything down. Takes twenty minutes. Saves more than that. The steel flex is not really the problem, it's that you signed a fixed number on a floating input, and there is no markup that fixes that, only a shorter gap between quote and order. If the client won't let you hold the price for a month, that is not your markup problem, that is their risk and it should be priced or refused. 25 percent is fine, but it is a bandage on a different wound.

Mateo Serrano·3w

The validity window is the thing nobody teaches, joder. I'm the small end of this, I'm not buying sheet steel by the tonne, but my glaze materials and my clay move the same way and I've eaten it more than once quoting a commission at a price I wrote down two months earlier. My last big order the clay alone went up enough that I stopped counting, because counting was making me sad.

Where I'd push back a little: calling the yard every time works when the yard is down the road and answers the phone. Half my suppliers are a form and a two week wait, so "today's number" is already stale by the time I can act on it. So the window does the real work for me, not the phone call. And twenty minutes is twenty minutes until it's three suppliers and an hour of my morning gone.