Plastering Quotes Made Simple

How to Price Gyprock Sheets and Compound Without Guessing

Stop walking the room with a tape measure. The fastest way to quote a wall or ceiling is by area. Your quote needs to specify the plasterboard type – standard 10mm, 13mm fire-rated, or wet area board – as they have different costs per sheet. The same goes for compound. A full skim coat uses far more topping compound than a standard tape-and-join job. Using a tool like QuoteMate calculates the exact number of sheets and buckets of compound needed from the square metres you enter, saving you from over-ordering or under-quoting. CSR Gyprock's Base Coat 45 covers roughly 40kg per 100 square metres of board.

Pricing Cornice Runs and Decorative Features Accurately

Cornice isn't just priced by the metre. The real cost is in the labour for cuts and corners. A square room with four internal corners is much faster than a hallway with six internals and two externals, even if the length is the same. Your quote should reflect this complexity. Itemise different profiles separately; a standard 75mm Cove is cheaper and faster to install than an ornate Victorian profile. Don't forget to add a separate line item for ceiling roses or other decorative mouldings. A simple 90mm Cove cornice from a supplier like CSR usually runs about $4.50 per linear metre before labour and GST.

What Plasterers Forget on Repair and Patching Quotes

Small patch jobs are where plasterers lose money. The biggest mistake is quoting for a single visit. Most repairs need at least two trips: one to patch and set, another to sand and finish. Both trips have travel time and setup costs. Another forgotten item is dust control. Quoting for plastic drop sheets, masking tape, and a final site clean-up shows professionalism and protects your margin. A simple water damage repair can easily require different compounds and primers to prevent stains bleeding through. A basic 300mm square ceiling patch, including two site visits, should never be quoted under $250 + GST.

Manage Every Plasterer Job From Inquiry to Paid

Quoting is only half the work. QuoteMate tracks every plastering job through a 9-stage pipeline — inquiry, quoted, accepted, scheduled, in progress, completed, paid, closed, or cancelled — with timestamps stamped automatically so you can see where every dollar is sitting and where the bottleneck is. Schedule jobs in two taps with Google Calendar sync, snap and annotate on-site photos against the job (not lost in your camera roll), keep a brain-dump checklist of materials and to-dos for the day, and chase quotes automatically if a customer goes quiet.

See how plasterers run jobs in QuoteMate →