Blog / Decor business

How to Quote Event Decor Without Losing Your Profit

How much does a balloon garland cost? Exactly as much as the balloons, your time, delivery, installation, taxes and your profit. Decorators lose money not on cheap orders but on orders without a quote, where half the costs never made it onto paper. Here is how to put together a decor quote, how to turn it into a client price, and how to keep track of orders once there are more than five a month.

What goes into a decor quote

• Materials. Balloons, fresh flowers, ribbon, tape and other consumables — everything used up on the job.
• Rentals. Arches, stands, vases, platforms, drapery and furniture, your own or rented. Even your own pieces wear out, so build them into the price.
• Labor. Prep, assembly, installation and takedown — hours times the rate, yours and your helpers’.
• Logistics. Delivery there and back, sometimes two trips, parking, waiting at the venue.
• Taxes. VAT, GST or sales tax, if they apply to you, are added to or included in the client price and passed on — they are not your money. Income tax comes out of your profit. Rules and rates depend on your country and your status.
• Profit. What you work for — after all the costs and taxes.

How to set the client price

There are two common approaches. Cost-plus: add up your costs and apply a markup that covers your time on messages, the mockup, shopping and risk. Market-based: check what other decorators in your area charge for similar setups, then make sure profit is left after costs and taxes. Both work well, as long as at the end you see one number: how much you earned on this order.

That is why “how much does a balloon garland cost” has no single answer. A 10 ft (3 m) two-color garland delivered to a home and the same garland at a venue out of town with a late-night install are different orders. Price the whole order, not the balloons.

An example of an event decor quote

A birthday photo backdrop: an arch with a balloon garland, foil numbers and a flower stand. The structure of the quote, line by line:

The client usually sees only the total and the scope of decor, while the cost and the profit stay with you.

How to keep track of orders

The first orders live in messages and notes. Then comes an Excel spreadsheet: date, client, venue, amount, deposit, status. It works while there are few orders, but a spreadsheet has three weak spots: it does not know what is in the order, it does not remind you of the install, and it does not work out the profit by itself. Whatever you use, every order should have:

• A status: in progress, on hold, approved, completed, archived.
• The date and the venue, with installation and takedown in the calendar.
• The deposit and the balance due.
• Tasks: sourcing, logistics, questions for the client — with deadlines.
• The result: revenue and profit per order and per month.

Quotes and order tracking in IQDeco

In IQDeco the quote is not typed in by hand — it is built from the mockup:

• A quote from the mockup. The mockup becomes a quote line with its own price and an expandable list of items. The list of items comes from the mockup; you set the prices yourself, and items from your inventory get the rental price you gave them.
• Your own lines. Delivery, installation, takedown and any other work are added by hand, and lines can be included or excluded.
• Cost, taxes and net profit. Taxes come from your studio details: VAT in the EU and the UK or GST in Australia if you are registered, plus an optional income-tax estimate on profit; US quotes carry no sales tax line. For a business client from another EU country under the reverse charge, VAT is taken off the quote. The client price is yours to set — the platform does not impose a markup.
• Deposit and balance. Quick 30%, 50% and 100% deposit buttons and the balance due right in the project card.
• Projects with statuses. In progress, on hold, approved, completed, archived; search by client and venue; and at the top, how many projects are in progress, for what amount and what the profit is.
• Tasks and notes. A project log by category — install, sourcing, quote, logistics, client; tasks with a due date go to the calendar and the notifications.
• Statistics. Revenue, net profit, the number of projects and conversion for a month, half a year, a year or a period of your own, with a chart of income and profit.
• An order sheet. The crew gets the zones, items and sizes by link — with or without prices.