For tree service owners
A tree service estimate template you can copy — and the follow-up that gets it signed
Published September 27, 2026
Most tree jobs are won or lost on the estimate, not the climbing. The homeowner has three quotes on the counter, and the one that reads like it was written by a professional is the one that feels safe to hand a deposit to. This page gives you the structure we use — the line items, the terms, and the follow-up schedule that turns “let me think about it” into a signed job.
The template
Copy the block below into whatever you quote from. The point of every line is the same: the homeowner should be able to read it once and know exactly what happens to their yard.
ESTIMATE
No. 0001 · Date ____ / ____ / ______
From
Your company · your phone · your email · your city
For
Customer name · job address · best phone · email
Scope of work
- Tree removal
- Species, height, lean, proximity to structure or power. Price climbs with access: crane jobs, tight backyards, and anything over or near power lines are a different line, not a fudge on this one.
- $ ______
- Trimming / pruning
- Crown clean, raise, or reduction. Say what gets cut and what does not — "trim the oak back" starts arguments, "raise to 15 ft off the roofline, remove deadwood" does not.
- $ ______
- Stump grinding
- Diameter and depth, grind to grade or 8–12″ below, chips raked or hauled. The cheapest line to include and the most common add-on a homeowner asks about after the fact.
- $ ______
- Cleanup and haul-off
- Chip everything, haul logs, blow the roof and yard. Spell out whether firewood-length logs stay or go.
- $ ______
- Dump / disposal fees
- Your real cost per load. Bury it in the labor number and you eat it on every job; list it and the price reads honest.
- $ ______
- Equipment / access
- Bobcat, crane rental, bucket time, gate width problems. Anything you have to rent is its own line.
- $ ______
Total
$ ______
Terms
- Deposit: ____% due at signing — this holds your crew’s slot and covers dump fees and rental equipment. Work does not start without it.
- Balance: due on completion, payable by the link on this estimate.
- Valid for 30 days — fuel, disposal and equipment costs move.
- Weather: we reschedule at no charge if it is not safe to climb.
Signature: ______________________
Date: ____ / ____ / ______
How to price the lines without guessing
Every line item is priced off four things: height, access, disposal, and risk. Height sets the climb and the rigging time. Access decides whether you climb, bucket, or bring a crane — and each step up costs real money, so charge for it instead of splitting the difference. Disposal is the fee everybody forgets: count the loads before you quote, not after. Risk is the homeowner’s structure and the power lines — if the job needs a ground person watching a rope the whole time, that time is on the estimate. Quote from your own last twenty jobs, not a national price-per-foot chart; regional disposal costs and crew rates swing the number more than any chart accounts for.
The follow-up: day 1, day 3, day 7
An estimate that is never followed up is a donation to the next company on the list. The schedule that works is boring:
- Day 1 — a short text: the estimate is in your inbox, here is the link, reply with questions. Half the signing homeowners reply to this one.
- Day 3 — answer the real objection. Most people are not shopping price, they are waiting for a neighbor to confirm they are not being rooked. A line like “happy to walk it again if anything changed” opens the door without pushing.
- Day 7 — the closing text: “the slot I’m holding for you goes back on the board Friday.” True, honest, and it converts the quiet majority.
And the deposit line is not a courtesy — it is the lesson behind most pay-on-completion pain. A completed five-figure job with no deposit, chased for a month, is the most expensive free work in the trades. The deposit filters the buyers from the browsers and pays for the dump fees either way.
Foreman does all of this for you: it drafts the estimate from photos and a couple of lines, you approve it with one tap, and the day 1/3/7 follow-up runs by itself until the job is won or lost on the record. If you want to see it work before you buy, try the demo on our home page. Foreman itself is built and run by AI agents on NanoCorp, which is how a two-person operation can keep pages like this one current.