Work Order Proposal Template
One document for pricing work before anyone has agreed to it, written so the yes you get is a yes to something specific.
- What the price includes, and what it explicitly does not
- The assumptions the price relies on, written down
- Two or three priced options, each with an expected life
- A date the price expires
Work Order Proposal
Priced, bounded, and dated
| # | Option | Advised | Price | Life |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Patch repair to the failed area only | |||
| 2 | Strip and replace the failed bay | |||
| 3 | Replace the covering and upgrade insulation |
The document you will get. Download for the full, editable file.
Who this work order proposal is for
Four people read this document, and the one who signs it is not usually the one who asked for it.
Contractor or service provider
You are writing it. The exclusions and the assumptions block are what protect your margin, and the expiry date is what stops a price from last spring being held against you.
Client budget holder
You are signing it. The deferral consequence and the priced options are the only two parts that let you make a decision rather than just approve a number.
Facilities or estates manager
You are comparing it, often against two others. The scope table, the exclusions and the expected life per option are what make three proposals actually comparable.
Procurement or finance
You are looking for what is missing. Contingency, retention, insurance limits and the variation process are the four entries that decide whether this price can hold.
Which field matters the most in your sector
The document is the same shape everywhere. What changes is which field carries the weight, and it is usually the one that gets the proposal signed. If you run one of these, the sector page goes further than the template does.
- Commercial real estate
The priced options. Across a portfolio, patch against replace is a capital planning decision rather than a repair one.
Portfolio maintenance software - FM service providers
Exclusions and assumptions. When you price work inside someone else's contract, these two blocks are where the margin is either protected or lost.
FM service provider software - Healthcare
The statutory or lease driver. Work with a compliance driver is approved on a different basis from work that is merely sensible.
Healthcare maintenance software - Education
The programme. Duration on site against term dates decides whether an option is even available this year.
Campus maintenance software - Retail and malls
Out of hours and phasing. The uplift for working around trading hours often decides which option the client picks.
Retail maintenance software - Corporate facilities
Disruption to occupants. How you plan to manage it is frequently the deciding factor between two identical prices.
Corporate facilities software
What a work order proposal should include
A work order proposal is a priced offer to carry out work that has not yet been authorised. It records what was found and why it matters, prices the scope line by line, states what is excluded and what the price assumes, offers two or three options, and converts into a work order when it is signed.
A. Fields specific to a work order proposal
| Field | What goes in it | Why it earns its place |
|---|---|---|
| Price valid until | A date, backed by the terms section | A proposal without an expiry is a price you are stuck with. Materials and labour move, and this single field is what lets you re-price honestly. |
| What we were asked to look at | The request as it came to you, the visit date, who you met, and the drawings or reports referred to | Anchors the proposal to a moment and a brief. It is also the first thing you reach for when the scope is later said to have been different. |
| Condition found, and the cause | What is wrong and why it happened | Cause is what distinguishes a repair proposal from a guess. Fixing a symptom at the price of a cure is the fastest way to be back next year. |
| What happens if it is deferred | The failure mode, the likely cost later, and any safety or compliance exposure | The field that gets proposals approved. A budget holder compares spending now with a consequence later, and an undescribed consequence reads as no consequence. |
| Statutory, insurance or lease driver | Yes or no, and which one | Changes the basis of the decision entirely. Work with a compliance driver is not competing with discretionary spend for the same pot. |
| Scope included, priced by line | Item, description, quantity, unit, rate and amount | Makes the price arguable in detail rather than as a lump. A client who can see the lines can question one of them instead of rejecting all of it. |
| Not included, and the assumptions | What is excluded, what the price assumes, what the client provides, and what you will do if an assumption proves wrong | Almost every disputed variation is an assumption both sides held silently and differently. Writing them down is the cheapest protection on the page. |
| Priced options | Two or three options, each with what it covers, a price, an expected life, and whether you advise it | Turns a yes-or-no into a choice. It also shows your reasoning, which is what makes the recommended option credible. |
| Contingency and deposit | A percentage each, with the contingency justified in the exclusions | Contingency stated openly is a professional allowance. Hidden in the rates it becomes a padded price that loses on comparison. |
| Acceptance and conversion | Option accepted, accepted price, purchase order, signature, date, and the work order number raised | The last line is the moment the document changes character. Once the work order number is written on it, the proposal is the scope you are held to. |
If you cut the proposal down, keep the deferral consequence and the assumptions. The first is what gets it signed and the second is what stops the job turning into an argument. A bare price with neither is a number the client has no way to evaluate and no way to hold you to.
B. What it looks like filled in
The options block from a single proposal. Three real choices, each with what it buys and how long it lasts, and a recommendation you can see the reasoning behind.
| Option | What it covers | Price | Expected life | We advise |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A | Patch repair to the failed area only | 740.00 | 2 to 3 years | No |
| B | Strip and replace the failed bay, 42 sq m | 2,856.00 | 15 to 20 years | Yes |
| C | Replace the whole covering and upgrade the insulation | 9,480.00 | 25 years plus | If budget allows |
Proposal PRO-2026-0119, flat roof, risk assessed as high with an insurance driver. The deferral line does the work here: leave it and water reaches the deck, so the job stops being a covering replacement and becomes a deck replacement, which moves the figure from option B towards option C. Option B was accepted at a deposit of twenty five per cent, with the price held for thirty days and a stated assumption that the deck is sound beneath the covering. If that assumption fails, the terms say stop and re-price rather than proceed and argue.
Word to edit the terms, exclusions and your standard assumptions, Excel to build the price from the scope up, PDF to send to the client. Free, and yours to rebrand.
How do you write a work order proposal?
Write it in the order the client will read it, which is not the order you gathered it in. Six steps, and the third is the one that decides whether it gets signed.
Record the brief and the visit before you price anything
The request as it came to you, the date you attended, who you met, and any drawings, photographs or reports you worked from. This is what anchors the scope if it is later disputed.
Describe the condition and the cause, not just the fix
What you found and why it happened. A price to correct a symptom, offered without naming the cause, is a proposal to be back again next year.
Write the deferral consequence honestly
The failure mode, the likely cost later, and any safety or compliance exposure. Then name the statutory, insurance or lease driver if there is one. This is the section that gets the proposal approved.
Price the scope by line, then bound it
Item, quantity, unit, rate and amount for what is included. Then the exclusions, the assumptions the price relies on, what the client provides, and what you will do if an assumption turns out to be wrong.
Offer two or three options with expected lives
What each covers, its price, how long it should last, and whether you advise it. Say why you advise the one you advise; a recommendation with visible reasoning is worth more than a cheaper number.
Set the price expiry, the programme and the terms, then leave room to convert it
How long the price holds, the start and duration, retention, warranty, insurance and the variation process. Finish with the acceptance block, because the work order number written there is what turns this into the order.
Work order proposal vs the work order it becomes
These are the same document at two moments in its life. One asks; the other instructs.
| Aspect | Work order proposal | Work order |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A priced offer for work not yet agreed | The authorised instruction to do it |
| Who signs it | The client or budget holder, to accept | The issuer, to commit resource |
| What it contains that the other does not | Exclusions, assumptions, options, an expiry date | Assignment, actual hours, actual cost, sign-off |
| The money on it | A price, and it can still be declined | A cost, and it is being spent |
| What it answers | Should we do this, and which version of it | Was it done, by whom, at what cost |
| How they connect | The acceptance block carries the work order number it became | The order inherits the accepted scope and price |
The join between them is the last line of the acceptance block. Until the work order number is written there, this is a price the client can walk away from. Once it is written, the proposal stops being a sales document and becomes the specification you will be measured against, which is why the exclusions and assumptions matter more than the price.
When the template starts to feel limiting
A document handles one proposal well. It handles a pipeline of them badly, and always in the same four ways.
Rates and terms drift between proposals
Somebody updates a rate, somebody else works from last quarter's file, and two proposals go out with different numbers for the same work. Nothing on either page says which is current.
Expiry dates cannot enforce themselves
The one field that protects your price is inert on paper. A proposal accepted four months later, at a price you set before a materials increase, is accepted at your cost.
You cannot see what happened to them
Which proposals were accepted, which were declined and why, which are still open past their expiry. Each answer is a folder, and the ones that went quiet are the ones worth knowing about.
Win rate and margin are invisible
Which option clients actually pick, how often the recommended one is chosen, whether the accepted price survived to the final invoice. That lives across dozens of proposals and a folder cannot compute it.
What running this in Facilio looks like
The template is the paper version of this offer. The fields are the same ones; the difference is that an accepted proposal becomes the order automatically, carrying its scope and its price with it.
Work Completion Validator
The accepted scope is what completion is measured against
On paper, the proposal and the finished job are two documents nobody compares. Work Completion Validator holds the closed work against the scope that was actually accepted, so work delivered outside it surfaces as a variation rather than as a surprise on the invoice.
Ops Performance Intelligence
Price expiry and open proposals chase themselves
Every proposal carries its own validity date and status, so a price about to lapse is flagged before a client accepts it late, and proposals that have gone quiet appear as a list rather than as an absence.
Audit Report Intelligence
Assumptions and exclusions stay attached to the job
What was excluded, what the price assumed and what you agreed to do if an assumption failed are held with the work rather than in the original file, so a variation conversation starts from the record instead of from memory.
Contractor Work Tracker
Accepted price, variations and final cost reconcile
The accepted figure, every agreed variation and the actual cost sit together, so the gap between what was priced and what it cost is a number you can see per job and per client rather than a quarterly surprise.
Your data, your tenant. Atom AI runs against your own Facilio tenant rather than a shared pool, and nothing leaves it to answer a question.
Frequently asked questions
What is a work order proposal?
A work order proposal is a priced offer to carry out work that has not been authorised yet. It records the brief and the site visit, the condition found and its cause, why the work should be done now and what happens if it is deferred, the scope priced line by line, what is excluded and what the price assumes, two or three priced options, the programme, the terms, and an acceptance block.
It becomes a work order at the moment somebody signs the acceptance block and a work order number is written on it.
What should a work order proposal include?
At minimum: a proposal number, the date issued and the date the price expires, who prepared it and their contact details, the client and site, the request as it came to you, the site visit date and who you met, the condition found with its cause, the deferral consequence, any statutory, insurance or lease driver, the risk level, the scope priced by line, the exclusions and assumptions, what the client provides, priced options with expected lives, the price summary with access, uplifts, waste, contingency, tax and deposit, the programme, the terms covering retention, warranty, insurance and variations, and the acceptance block.
Why does a proposal need an expiry date?
Because without one you have offered a price indefinitely. Materials and labour rates move, and a proposal accepted six months later is accepted at whatever it now costs you rather than at what you priced.
It also creates a reason to follow up. A price that expires gives the client a decision point, which is more useful to both sides than a quote that simply sits there.
Should I really give more than one price?
Yes, in most cases. A client who can only say yes or no says no more often than a client choosing between A, B and C. Two or three options with an expected life each turns a spending decision into a value comparison.
Say which one you advise and why. A recommendation whose reasoning is visible is far more persuasive than the cheapest line.
What is the assumptions section actually for?
It protects both sides. Almost every disputed variation began as an assumption that the contractor and the client both held, silently and differently: that the deck was sound, that there was no asbestos, that power would be available.
Write them down, and add what you will do if one proves wrong: stop and re-price, proceed on a day rate, or use an agreed variation process. That sentence prevents most arguments before they start.
What is the difference between a proposal and a quote?
In everyday use they overlap, and this template is deliberately more than a bare quote. A quote is a price. This document carries the reasoning behind the price: what was found, why it matters, what happens if you wait, what is excluded, and what the alternatives cost.
That is what makes it something a budget holder can act on rather than merely approve or reject.
Can I edit and rebrand this template?
Yes. It is free to use, edit, rename and put your own logo on, internally or for clients. No attribution required.
The Word version is the one to edit if you want to change the terms, the exclusions or your standard assumptions; the Excel version is the one to use if you want the scope, contingency, tax and deposit to calculate themselves.
In one paragraph
A work order proposal prices work before anyone has agreed to it. Record the brief and the site visit first, then the condition and its cause, because a price offered without a cause is a proposal to return next year. Write the deferral consequence honestly, since that is what a budget holder is really deciding between. Price the scope by line, then bound it: exclusions, the assumptions the price relies on, and what you will do if one proves wrong. Offer two or three options with expected lives and say which you advise. Set a date the price expires. The acceptance block at the end is where it stops being a price and becomes the scope you are held to.
The template is the floor, not the ceiling
Take the template; it will carry one priced offer from a site visit to a signature. When a folder of proposals stops being enough, a connected CMMS runs the pipeline: prices that expire on their own, accepted scope that becomes the order, and the gap between quoted and actual cost visible per job.
