How to Create a Client Project Estimate

Project cost estimates will be determined by the client, the project, and your particular business. However, these seven steps can get you started if you've never generated a project estimate for a client before.

1. Outline your team's roles and responsibilities

Include information about who you are, what your business does, and who is on the team for a client's project. Clients want to know how much they're going to be spending, but it's also useful to introduce yourself, how you work, and what your project management process is. This helps you build trust with the client beyond numbers, which can help you win their business.

2. Write a project summary

Sometimes clients will provide a detailed overview of their project and expectations, and other times they provide a general idea. It's important for you to understand what you'll need to deliver to satisfy the client. Write a project summary that includes the client's needs, what success looks like, and how you'll deliver on that success.

Include a breakdown of everything that will happen in the project timeline (such as first drafts, reviews and final deadlines), a list of deliverables, and any relevant process or project management information.

3. Do project discovery

Get as much information about the project as you can to include in the finalized estimate for a client. This can include looking back on past projects to understand your process and time management. If you're working with corporate clients, it might mean gathering information on stakeholders and leaders who will ultimately sign off on the project's completion, and what deliverables are needed, as well as expected launch times.

The more you know about the scope of the project itself, the better informed your project estimate will be.

4. Calculate your costs for tasks and labor

Not all projects will include more than one person. If you're writing a cost estimate for yourself as a freelance illustrator, for example, your estimate will largely be an estimated pricing of your time and resources. However, if you're running a small agency with two to three illustrators all working on the same project, you'll need to include information about their availability and what it'll cost to have all of them on the project.

This is flexible depending on what resources you need to complete the project, but it doesn't have to be complicated. List out any materials you'd need to buy to complete your work, everyone working on the project, their associated tasks, and the rate of your team's labor to give clients an idea of what to expect.

See our guide to setting your rates

5. Include potential additional fees

It's important to build in some buffer or contingency money into your estimate. Once the estimate becomes a budget, it's likely there will be no wiggle room if an emergency happens or something costs more than what was projected. Add a certain percentage (e.g. 10-25%) extra as a separate item in the project estimate so your client can build it into their budget knowing that, in a perfect world, they won't have to use it.

Specify what might cause a budget to increase, like additional rounds of revisions, late requests, or other changes to the scope of your services.

6. Calculate total cost of the project

Once you've detailed what the project is, who is working on it, how much it'll cost for labor and materials, and indicated a buffer amount for additional or hidden costs, then you can calculate the total cost of the project. Don't forget to add any additional tax or payment fees that you may need to charge.

7. Generate project timeline

You can write this in the summary or give it its own section, but it's imperative that your client knows after reading your project cost estimate what the timeline will be to complete the project. Give as much detail as you can about specific phases, who needs to sign off when to move onto the next phase, and the predicted final delivery date of the project.

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