PressureWashingBossPro Blog — Quotes & Estimates

Building the Service List Behind Every Pressure Washing Estimate

Every estimate you send is only as good as the list it is built from. If the list is vague, the quotes are vague. If two people in the office price the same driveway two different ways, customers notice. A clean service list is the first thing to set up and the thing that saves the most time later.

Why the List Comes First

The big picture of quoting is covered in Pressure Washing Estimate Software: The Complete Guide to Measuring, Quoting and Booking the Job. This article zooms in on the foundation underneath it.

In PressureWashingBossPro, an estimate is a set of line items pulled from your service list. Pick “House Wash,” pick “Driveway & Walks,” add “Gutter Brightening,” and the prices come in from the list. When the customer approves, those same lines become the job and later the invoice. Set the list up well once and every quote, job and invoice after it is consistent.

The Residential Core

Most pressure washing companies start with the same handful of residential services:

• House Wash — usually a soft wash of the siding, trim and soffits.
• Roof Soft Wash — low-pressure cleaning of shingles or tile.
• Driveway & Walks — concrete flatwork with a surface cleaner.
• Patio and Pool Deck — often concrete or pavers, sometimes stone.
• Deck — wood or composite, cleaned gently.
• Fence — wood, vinyl or masonry, priced by length or area.

Keep the names plain. The customer sees them on the estimate, the crew sees them on their phone and the office sees them on reports. “Driveway & Walks” reads better than an internal code like “FLAT-RES-1.”

Add-Ons Get Their Own Lines

Add-ons are where a lot of money hides. If gutter brightening, rust removal and gum removal are not on the list, they end up as a verbal promise the crew may or may not hear about. Give each one its own service:

• Gutter Brightening — cleaning the oxidation streaks off the outside face of the gutters.
• Rust Removal — irrigation stains, fertilizer marks and similar spots on concrete.
• Gum Removal — mostly commercial sidewalks and entrances.

When add-ons are on the list, it is easy to offer them on every quote, and easy to see which ones customers actually say yes to. The details of pricing them are in Add-Ons on a Pressure Washing Estimate: Gutter Brightening, Rust and Gum Removal.

The Commercial Side

If you do any commercial work, put it on the same list:

• Storefront Monthly — sidewalks and entrances on a recurring schedule.
• Drive-Thru — lanes and pads at restaurants and banks.
• Dumpster Pad — usually recurring, often with hot water.
• Parking Garage — large areas, often bid by level or by area.
• Fleet — trucks and trailers, usually priced per vehicle.

Having residential and commercial on one list means one estimate tool, one set of reports and one place to look when a property manager calls about a storefront and their own house.

How Each Service Is Priced

Decide how each service is priced before you add it. Common approaches:

• Flat price — a set number, like a $95 dumpster pad visit or a $65 gutter brightening on a typical home.
• By square foot — driveways, patios, roofs and decks, priced off a measurement.
• By linear foot — fences, and sometimes gutters.
• By size band — house washes priced by square-foot range and stories.

Those numbers are examples, not advice. Your rates depend on your area, your costs and the work you want. PressureWashingBossPro holds the prices you set; it does not pick them for you. Because estimates can price off a property's measurements, the square-foot services work especially well once you trace the surfaces on the satellite map.

Keep It Short and Keep It Current

A list with sixty services is as hard to use as no list. Start with the ten or fifteen you sell most. Add others when a real customer asks for them. If a service has not been quoted in a season, think about whether it belongs on the list at all.

Review prices at the start of each season. Chemicals, fuel and labor costs move. Update the list before the spring rush, so every new estimate goes out at this year's price instead of last year's.

Finally, write a short description for any service a customer might not understand. “Gutter Brightening: removes the black streaks on the outside of your gutters” answers the question before anyone has to call.

Putting the List to Work

With the list in place, the next step is deciding how to price by area, which is covered in the next guide on square-foot pricing. Once that is set, quoting most residential jobs comes down to measuring and picking lines. To see how the service list connects to estimates, approval and scheduling, visit the PressureWashingBossPro pressure washing estimate software page.