Build a freelance quote from your numbers, not a guess.
Use the free starter CSV to keep the assumptions behind a project quote in one place, then use the browser calculator to work out a sustainable internal rate, project fee, deposit and margin. The file is deliberately simple so you can open it in Excel, Google Sheets or LibreOffice and adapt it to your workflow.
No email gate. No account. The download contains planning fields only and no macros.
What is inside the template?
- Owner-income, overhead, reserve and billable-utilization assumptions.
- Project hours and explicit complexity, revision and ambiguity buffers.
- Client fee, deposit and remaining-balance fields.
- Direct cost, actual-hours, project-profit and profit-per-hour fields for post-project review.
A practical quote workflow
First calculate the revenue your business needs and divide it across realistic billable hours. Use that internal rate to estimate the project, then add only the buffers that match the actual scope. Before sending the quote, define the deposit and what happens when requested work falls outside scope. After delivery, compare the client fee with direct costs and actual hours so the next quote is based on evidence.
Why keep the spreadsheet separate from the calculator?
The calculator is faster for scenario testing; the CSV is useful as a portable record of the assumptions you chose. Neither replaces a contract, accounting advice or jurisdiction-specific tax guidance.