Quote generator online free: date it before fuel moves

A free online quote generator does the job in South Africa this month. Add four things most people skip: a validity date before fuel moves, the deposit, the pump price you used, and a signature. Ten minutes, no cost.

Why now: early Central Energy Fund data reported by Bizcommunity on 12 October points to petrol rising by nearly R5 a litre in November. BusinessTech's reading of the same data on 7 October put 95 petrol up R4.58 and diesel up R2.56 to R2.91. The projections disagree, and they are recalculated daily. A quote you send this week for a job in November is priced on October fuel. If the customer accepts it in three weeks, you carry the difference.

Before you start

• Your October fuel price. Inland 95 petrol is R30.25 a litre, from the official prices that took effect on 7 October. Diesel is quoted wholesale: R31.95 for inland 500ppm and R33.29 for 50ppm, and the pump price will differ. Coastal prices are lower. Use the price your vehicles actually fill at.
• The litres per job. Kilometres for the job divided by your vehicle's real consumption. Rough is fine.
• Your deposit rule. What you need upfront to cover the first cost you cannot get back.

Step 1: Open the quote generator and fill in the basics

Open the free quotation generator. Enter your business name, the customer under "Quote for", a quote number and today's date. Put each part of the work on its own line, with a description, quantity and unit price: labour, materials, travel.

You should see a quote with a total. Most people stop here. Do not.

Step 2: Set a validity date before the fuel moves

Fuel prices change on the first Wednesday of every month, which puts the next change on 4 November. The department has not announced it yet. Set the "Valid until" field to 3 November, and say it again in the notes in plain words: This quote is valid until 3 November 2026.

A quote without a date is an open promise. A customer who finds it in a drawer in December can reasonably ask you to honour it.

Step 3: Put travel on its own line, with the price and date you used

Write the fuel basis into the travel line's description or the notes: Travel priced at 95 petrol R30.25 a litre, inland, 7 October 2026. That one sentence turns a later price change from an argument into arithmetic.

Here is what is at stake. Say a plumbing job needs 120 km of driving over a week at 12 litres per 100 km. That is about 14.4 litres. At R4.58 a litre more, the fuel cost rises by about R66 on that job.

R66 sounds small. Across forty jobs quoted in October for November, it is about R2 640 of margin gone. On a transport or events quote, where fuel is a big share of cost, it is far more.

Step 4: Add a re-pricing line for acceptance after the date

In the notes, under the validity line, add: If accepted after 3 November 2026, the travel line will be re-priced at the pump price on the day of acceptance. Keep it to the travel line. A customer accepts a fuel adjustment far more easily than a whole new quote.

Step 5: State the deposit and when the balance is due

The generator has no deposit field, so this goes in the notes too. Write the deposit as a rand figure, not a percentage, and when it is due: Deposit R1 500 on acceptance. Balance on completion. A deposit paid before 4 November also locks the customer in while your price still holds.

Step 6: Ask for acceptance by signature and date

End the notes with: Accepted by, name, signature, date. The date on the acceptance is the date your validity clause reads against. Without it, you have no way to show the customer accepted after the price moved.

Click "Print or save as PDF", choose Save as PDF as the printer, and send the file. Keep the PDF with the job.

What breaks here

The figure will move. The R4.58 and the nearly R5 are early projections, and they will change before November. The Bizcommunity piece on R10 billion in government relief says Parliament's Select Committee on Appropriations adopted a bill letting Treasury release R10 billion to help cover fuel costs. It still had to go to the National Assembly when reported, and no source says how much of it reaches the pump. Price on the published October number and let the clause do the rest.

Coast and inland differ. Inland 95 petrol was 87c a litre dearer than coastal in October. A business that quotes from Durban but drives to Pietermaritzburg should price on the pump it fills at.

Customers sign late and say nothing. The quote gets accepted by WhatsApp with a thumbs-up on 6 November. Decide now whether a WhatsApp reply counts as acceptance, and if it does, the reply's date is the one you use.

Nobody remembers to re-price. The clause only works if somebody checks the acceptance date against the validity date before the job is booked.

When this stops being enough

One quote a day, a free generator and a diary reminder will hold. It stops holding at twenty open quotes, two vehicles and a fuel price that moves every month. Then nobody can say which quotes lapse this week, which accepted quotes need re-pricing, or what the travel lines add up to across the book.

That needs the quote to know its own expiry date and re-price its travel line from one stored fuel price. Zorah joins the quoting, booking and invoicing tools you already use, so a quote that lapses gets re-priced before it becomes an invoice. For businesses that quote other businesses, the quoting workflow for B2B suppliers is the same idea at volume.

On Monday, open every quote you have sent since 7 October for work in November. Send each customer the same quote with a validity date of 3 November and the fuel line added.