The short version: the best free Excel price quotation template is Microsoft’s own built-in “Sales Quote” template, available inside Excel under File > New, because it’s already formatted, has working formulas, and won’t vanish or start nagging you to upgrade six months in. Vertex42’s free quote template is the better pick if you need something more polished without a Microsoft account. Everything else you’ll find through a Google search is either a lead magnet for paid software or a template so basic you’ll rebuild it within a month anyway.
The template I use, and why it’s not fancy
I’ve been sending price quotes from spreadsheets since before “SaaS” was a word anyone used. When I started rebuilding my consultancy in public two years ago, going back to basics with pricing and invoicing was part of that. No fancy proposal software, no £40 a month tool I’d forget to cancel. Just Excel, because Excel already lives on my laptop and I’m not paying for something I can do myself in twenty minutes.
The template that’s served me best is the built-in one inside Excel itself. Open Excel, go to File, click New, type “quote” or “sales quote” into the search box, and Microsoft gives you two or three ready-made options with a logo box, a company details section, itemised rows for quantity, description, unit price and total, and a VAT or tax line already calculated with a formula. It’s plain. It’s also correct, which matters more than most people realise.
If you don’t have a Microsoft 365 subscription and you’re using an older version of Excel or Google Sheets instead, Vertex42’s free quote template (search “Vertex42 quote template”) is the next best thing. It’s been around since 2009, it’s used by enough small businesses that the formulas have been stress tested by thousands of people, and it doesn’t require you to hand over an email address to a lead-gen form before you can download it.
What makes a quote template good
Forget design for a second. A price quotation template only needs six things to work:
- A unique quote number that increases automatically or that you remember to update manually
- A clear validity date (“this quote is valid for 30 days”) so you’re not honouring a price from eight months ago
- Itemised line items with quantity, unit price, and a total column that calculates itself
- A subtotal, a tax line, and a grand total, with the tax rate as its own cell you can change rather than baked into a formula
- Payment terms stated in plain English, not buried in a footer nobody reads
- Your business details, including a VAT number if you’re VAT registered, because clients’ finance teams will bounce a quote that’s missing one
That’s it. Everything beyond that, colour schemes, fancy borders, a photo of your team, is decoration. Useful decoration if you’re pitching a corporate client who expects polish, but decoration all the same.
The mistake that costs people money
Here’s the bit most posts on this topic skip over: the free template isn’t the risk. The risk is that once you’ve downloaded it, you never check the formulas again.
I had a client query a quote in 2023 where the total was £340 out. Not because I’d typed a wrong number, but because months earlier I’d inserted a row for a discount line and the SUM formula in the total cell hadn’t updated to include it. Excel doesn’t warn you when you insert a row in the wrong place and a formula range quietly stops covering it. It just sits there, wrong, looking completely normal, until a client’s accounts person catches it before you do. That’s the uncomfortable truth nobody selling you a “top 10 free templates” listicle wants to mention: a free template is only as reliable as your own habit of checking it before every single send. Download it once and trust it forever, and eventually it will embarrass you in front of a client.
My fix now is boring and it works. Before I send any quote, I click on the total cell and glance at the formula bar to confirm the range still covers every line. Takes four seconds. Cheaper than the £340 mistake.
Step by step: setting up your own in under 20 minutes
- Open Excel, File > New, search “quote” or “invoice” (quote templates and invoice templates share almost identical structure)
- Replace the placeholder logo and company name with yours, and add your VAT number if applicable
- Set up your quote numbering: I use a simple format like Q-2026-014, and I keep a separate tracking tab (or even a Google Sheet) listing every quote number I’ve used so I never repeat one
- Check the tax cell is a formula referencing a rate cell, not a fixed percentage typed into the total, so you can update VAT in one place if it ever changes
- Add a “valid until” date field near the top, calculated as today’s date plus 30 days using a simple formula like =TODAY()+30
- Save it as a template file (.xltx) so every new quote opens as a fresh copy rather than you overwriting last month’s quote by accident
- Export each finished quote to PDF before sending, so the client can’t accidentally edit your numbers
That last step matters more than people think. I’ve had exactly one client “accidentally” change a quantity in an editable spreadsheet and query why the total looked different from what we’d discussed on the call. PDF export takes one click and closes that door completely.
When a free template isn’t enough
If you’re sending three or four quotes a month, Excel is fine, more than fine. If you’re sending thirty a month, or you need clients to accept and pay directly from the quote, or you want automatic follow-up reminders, you’ve outgrown a spreadsheet and you know it. That’s a different conversation about workflow tools, not templates, and it’s one I cover with clients directly when I work through practical AI implementation for small business processes like quoting and invoicing, because the fix is rarely “buy more software,” it’s usually “automate the three repetitive steps and keep the rest simple.”
Most freelancers and small business owners I’ve spoken to over the years, including in the freelance advice I’ve built up from fifteen years of trial and error, stick with a spreadsheet far longer than they think they should, and that’s not a bad thing. A free template that you use and check consistently will always beat an expensive tool that intimidates you into avoiding your admin.
Where a form beats a spreadsheet
One thing worth saying: if you’re constantly quoting the same handful of services with slightly different quantities, a spreadsheet template stops being the fastest route in. I’ve had better results building a short quote-request form that clients fill in themselves, similar to the kind of setup covered in this piece on SurveySparrow’s quote and form features, no, let me correct that, similar to what I wrote about when reviewing SurveySparrow as a platform for professional forms. The client answers four or five questions, and the answers drop straight into your Excel template’s input cells. It sounds like a small thing. It saves a genuine chunk of back-and-forth email time when you’re quoting the same three packages repeatedly.
A quiet way to turn your template into income
Here’s a sideline worth knowing about if quoting and pricing is something you’ve become good at through running your own business: templates like this are sellable. I’ve watched people package up a well-built Excel quote template, add a short how-to guide, and sell it on Etsy or Gumroad for £8 to £15. It’s a similar logic to what I laid out in building passive income from skills you already have, the skill of building a clean, working spreadsheet is worth more to other small business owners than most people assume, precisely because so many of the free ones online are badly built.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a truly free Excel template for price quotations with no sign-up required?
Yes. The built-in templates inside Excel itself (File > New > search “quote”) require no sign-up beyond your existing Microsoft account, and Vertex42’s free quote template can be downloaded directly from its website with no email required. Avoid third-party “template libraries” that ask for an email address before releasing the download, since most of these exist purely to add you to a sales list for paid invoicing software.
What’s the difference between a quote template and an invoice template?
Structurally, almost nothing, both have itemised lines, a subtotal, tax, and a total. The differences are in the labelling and terms: a quote should state a validity period (“valid for 30 days”) and usually says “estimate” or “quote” rather than “invoice,” while an invoice includes a payment due date and often a payment reference number. Many people simply duplicate their invoice template and relabel it for quotes.
Should I use Excel or Google Sheets for price quotations?
Either works fine. Excel’s built-in templates are slightly more polished out of the box, but Google Sheets is easier if you work across devices or want a client-facing team member to update pricing without needing Excel installed. The formulas and structure transfer almost identically between the two.
How do I stop my Excel quote formulas breaking when I add rows?
Always insert new rows inside the existing table range rather than above or below it, and after inserting, click on your total cell and check the formula bar to confirm the SUM range still includes the new row. This one habit prevents the most common and most embarrassing error in spreadsheet-based quoting: a total that quietly stops adding up correctly.
Related reading: How Squarespace Markets Itself (And What Small Business Owners Should Steal From It) and How to Plan a Project Timeline Using a Spreadsheet Template.
