Are Your Quotes Expiring Before the Ink Dries?

Something unusual happened in the construction industry this week. The cost of steel changed three times in forty-eight hours. First it went up sharply. Then a court ruling brought it back down. Then the new policy pushed it somewhere in between.

By Friday morning, a contractor who quoted a job on Monday was working with numbers that had already been wrong twice.

This is not a story about steel. It is a story about what happens when the world moves faster than your pricing.

Most contractors send out quotes with a 30 to 90 day acceptance window. The homeowner or property manager takes their time deciding. They compare bids. They talk it over. They come back six weeks later ready to sign.

In that six weeks, the cost of materials may have shifted. Labor availability may have changed. Fuel prices may have moved. But the number on that quote has not moved at all.

This is where profit disappears without anyone noticing. The job still gets done. The invoice still goes out. But the margin between what was quoted and what was spent has quietly shrunk.

On a single job, the difference might be a few hundred dollars. Across a full season of work, it can add up to tens of thousands.

Large firms have procurement departments and supplier contracts that lock in pricing months ahead. They absorb cost swings without changing a single bid.

Smaller operations often price each job as it comes, so they adjust naturally. They see the receipt and adjust the next quote.

It is the mid-sized contractor, the one doing a million or more in revenue with a full pipeline of open quotes, who feels this the most. There are too many active bids to update manually. But there is no system in place to adjust them automatically.

The result is a growing gap between expected profit and actual profit. Revenue looks strong. The schedule is full. But the owner's draw at the end of the month does not reflect any of that.

The first is shortening the quote window. Thirty days instead of ninety. If a client needs more time to decide, the conversation shifts to current pricing at the time of acceptance. This protects both sides.

The second is adding a material escalation clause to contracts. This is already standard in commercial construction. It simply states that material costs will be adjusted to reflect actual prices at the time of purchase. Most clients understand this when it is explained clearly.

The third is a weekly check on actual costs against quoted costs. Not monthly. Not at tax time. A quick comparison each week that takes ten minutes and shows whether the numbers are holding or drifting.

None of these require new software or a big investment. They require attention.

The average operating margin in the landscaping industry is 7.9 percent. That means for every hundred dollars of revenue, less than eight dollars remains as profit after all costs are covered.

At that margin, there is almost no room for pricing errors. One quarter of mis-priced jobs can erase an entire year of profit growth.

The businesses that consistently grow their owner profit are not necessarily doing more work. They are keeping more from every job they already do. They know their numbers in real time, not in hindsight.

Financial clarity is not about predicting what the market will do next. It is about building a system that adjusts when the market moves, so the math always works in your favor.