title: "What should a contractor bid include" h1: "What a complete bid actually contains" description: "Most residential proposals are shorter than people expect."
Most residential proposals are shorter than people expect.
That is normal. A bid is not a contract drafted by a lawyer, and a contractor who sends four paragraphs and a number is not being careless. He is writing the way his trade writes.
But there is a difference between short and incomplete, and it is worth knowing which one you are holding before you sign it.
Here is what a complete bid covers, in roughly the order it usually appears.
Who is actually contracting
The business name on the proposal should be the entity you are hiring.
It is the name that has to match the insurance certificate, the name on the license if your state requires one, and the name that means anything if the job goes sideways.
Where a license is required for the trade, the number belongs on the document.
What the work is
The scope, described by area or by stage.
The useful version reads like a walk through the job: what happens in the kitchen, what happens to the floors, what happens to the ceiling. The less useful version is a single line naming the room.
A bid that describes the work in the contractor's own terms is doing its job.
What is not included
The exclusions, in writing.
This is the section people skip and the one that decides arguments. A bid that names its exclusions is a bid you can trust the rest of, because the contractor has thought about the edges of the job rather than just the middle.
Exclusions are frequently a sentence rather than a list, sitting at the bottom of the last page or inside a paragraph about something else. They still count.
Materials, and who is buying them
For each significant material: what it is, and whose money buys it.
This single question moves numbers more than almost anything else. Paint, fixtures, tile, cabinets, and appliances can all be in a price or all be yours to supply, and two bids can differ enormously while being equally honest about it.
Permit fees, in the price or not
The licensed contractor pulls the permit. That part is rarely in question, and asking about it tells him you have not done this before.
What varies is whose money pays the fee. Some bids carry it. Some exclude it and expect it from you at cost. Both are normal, and the gap between them can be small or considerable depending on the work and where you are.
So the line to look for is the fee, not the errand.
Allowances, with a number and a unit
Where you have not chosen something yet, the bid carries an allowance.
A good one is specific: an amount, per unit, for a named category. A vague one is a placeholder that makes the total look better than the job will be.
What an allowance actually buys is worth checking before you treat the total as real, and that is what is an allowance, and why does it matter.
The price, and what kind of price it is
A lump sum is normal and is not a warning sign.
What matters is whether the document says what the number covers, not whether the number is broken into parts. If the price expires, the bid should say when.
The payment schedule
Tied to completed milestones, not to dates on a calendar.
A deposit sized to cover material orders is reasonable and normal. A very large payment before anything has been ordered puts you in a poor position if the job stalls, and it is the one term worth pushing back on.
A start date and a duration
A date he expects to start, and a number of working days he expects it to take.
Working days rather than calendar days; the difference is usually a week. Nobody can promise weather or an inspection schedule, and a range is a fair answer. Silence is not.
What happens when something turns up
Behind a wall, under a floor, in a trench.
The good version names the likely surprise and prices it in advance: a rate per sheet for bad decking, a rate for rot, a clause for rock. That is a contractor who has done this before and would rather tell you now.
The absence of any such term does not mean nothing will turn up. It means the conversation happens later, while you are standing in an open floor and the cheap moment to ask has already passed.
How changes get priced and approved
In writing, before the work happens.
This is the most common route from one number to a noticeably larger one, and almost all of it is avoidable. A bid that describes its own change process is telling you it intends to use one.
The warranty on workmanship
What is covered and for how long.
Manufacturer warranties on products are separate and usually longer. The one that matters here is the labor: if something he installed fails because of how it was installed, what happens, and for how long after the job ends.
What the bid is based on
Where there are drawings, the bid will usually say the work is per the plans and leave it at that.
That is normal and not worth arguing with. What it means is that the proposal is pointing at a document rather than describing the work, so the description in the bid itself has to carry the scope. If the plans change after he prices them, that is a new number and a new conversation. Why that decides who pays is the bid is the agreement, not the plans.
Insurance and license details belong here too, which is is your contractor insured for this work.
Keep everything
Every bid, every revision, every text message. When there is a disagreement six weeks in, the person with the paper trail is the person who stays calm.
A bid does not have to be long. It has to be specific about what it covers, what it does not, and what happens when the job surprises everybody.
Once you have two or three of these in front of you, lining them up is the next job, and that is how to compare contractor bids.