Auto Detailing Estimate Template: Size Class and Package

Short answer: An auto detailing estimate template is a grid, not a list: vehicle size class down one side, package level across the other. Size class comes from door jambs, seat rows, and wheel design, not curb weight — a three-row SUV runs about 1.45 to 1.6 times a compact sedan. Every package gets a stated hours figure, and condition problems like pet hair, smoke, and mold sit on separate conditional lines confirmed at drop-off.

Detailing is the trade where the customer’s photos are useless. A phone picture cannot show you a dog’s undercoat woven into the third-row carpet, cannot show you smoke in the headliner, and definitely cannot show you whether the previous shop already buried the swirls under filler glaze. That is why the estimate has to be built as a structure with room in it for what you find, rather than a single number texted back in four minutes. What you hand over at pickup is a different document with a different job, and the difference between a quote and what a receipt actually is is worth being clear on before you set up your paperwork.

What belongs on an auto detailing estimate?

Nine lines, and only three of them are the service the customer asked for.

Line	Unit	Why it is separate
Vehicle and size class	Year, make, model, class	Everything downstream is a multiple of this
Package	Named level, with hours stated	Hours are what you are actually selling
Add-on services	Each	Engine bay, headlight restoration, wheels off, trim restoration
Condition surcharge	Hourly or tiered, conditional	Pet hair, smoke, mold, sand, spills
Consumables note	Included, or stated	Coating milliliters and pad count are real cost, not overhead
Mobile setup	Flat, per visit	Water, power, shade, and space
Travel	Per mile beyond a radius, or by zone	Two hours of driving is two hours you did not detail
Time in your care	Days and hours, not dollars	The customer is lending you their transportation
Cure and aftercare	Words	The coating warranty lives or dies here

Header: the estimate number, the date, the expiration, the VIN or plate, and the odometer. Footer: exclusions, conditional lines, and a signature that acknowledges the condition clause.

How do I set the size classes?

By what your hands have to touch, not by what the vehicle weighs. Five classes cover almost everything that rolls into a bay.

Class	Vehicles	What drives the hours	Multiplier on the base package
1	Coupe, compact sedan	Two rows, low roof, small glass area	1.00
2	Midsize and full-size sedan	Longer panels, four jambs, larger glass	1.10
3	Two-row crossover or SUV	Taller panels, cargo area, more glass, roof rails	1.25
4	Three-row SUV, minivan	Third row, up to seven headrests, eight floor sections, sliding door tracks	1.45 to 1.60
5	Full-size pickup, lifted truck, dually	Roof needs a step, bed and liner, deep wheel wells, six wheels on a dually	1.50 to 1.70

Two details inside those classes decide more time than the class itself. Door jambs are the first: a four-door has twice the jambs of a coupe, and jambs are slow, awkward, hand-wiped work that nobody photographs and everybody checks. Wheels are the sleeper. A flat-face cover wipes in a minute; an open-spoke twenty-spoke wheel carrying brake dust is three times that per corner, and wheels-off cleaning is a different service with its own torque-spec responsibility.

Write the class on the estimate along with the reason. “Class 4, three-row, seven seats, open-spoke wheels” tells the customer why the minivan quote differs from the sedan quote next door.

What actually goes in each package level?

Hours. Everything else is marketing language, and marketing language is what gets you arguing at pickup about whether the headliner was supposed to be included.

Package	What is in it	Hands-on hours, class 3
Maintenance wash	Contact or touchless wash, wheels and tires, glass, quick interior vacuum	1.0 to 1.5
Interior deep clean	Full hot-water extraction, steam, leather clean and condition, headliner spotting, vents, jambs	3 to 5
Exterior decontamination	Wash, iron remover, clay or mitt, sealant	2 to 3
One-step polish	Cut and finish in a single pass, partial defect removal	4 to 7
Two-step correction	Compound then refine, trim taped, IPA wipedowns, inspection lighting	8 to 14
Multi-stage prep for coating	Three or more stages, panel-by-panel inspection	14 to 25
Ceramic coating application	Panel prep, application, leveling, dwell time	2 to 4 on top of correction

Adjust those hours by your size multiplier and you have the labor half of every quote you will ever write.

One piece of honesty belongs in the polish lines. Defect removal is a range, not a promise. A one-step commonly clears a majority of light swirling but leaves deeper marks, and how far you can safely go depends on the paint you find when you get a gauge on it. Write the range on the estimate, write that final correction depth is confirmed after a test section and a paint thickness reading, and write that some defects are through the clear and will not come out. A customer who reads that before work starts is a customer who does not become a dispute.

Which conditions have to be conditional lines?

The ones that double the hours and cannot be seen until the doors are open.

Condition	What it does to the job	How to write it
Pet hair, light to moderate	Adds 45 to 90 minutes of pumice, brush, and vacuum before extraction can even start	Tiered per-vehicle surcharge
Pet hair, severe, woven into cloth	Two to four extra hours; sometimes seats come out to reach it	Hourly, quoted after an in-person look
Smoke odor	Cabin filter, HVAC treatment, headliner, and a full ozone or hydroxyl cycle with the vehicle out of the bay overnight	A separate service with a stated number of treatments and no absolute guarantee
Mold or mildew	PPE, antimicrobial, and a water leak that must be fixed first or it comes back	Inspect first, quote hourly, and state the leak condition in writing
Beach sand	An entire extra vacuum stage, and it clogs the extractor	Flat surcharge
Spilled milk, vomit, or heavy food	Enzyme treatment, multiple extractions, drying time	Hourly, no odor guarantee on the first pass
Biological or bodily fluid cleanup	Different training, chemicals, and disposal	Not a detailing line at all — decline or refer

The sentence that makes this work sits above the signature: prices assume normal soiling for the vehicle’s age; the conditions listed below are assessed at drop-off, and any that apply are quoted and approved before work begins. Photographs from a customer never show pet hair and never show smell. Say so before the keys change hands, not after.

What does mobile work add that a shop bay doesn’t?

Four constraints, and each one belongs on the estimate as either a line or a condition.

Water is the first. A traditional wash on a class-4 vehicle can move thirty to sixty gallons; rinseless methods move a couple of gallons. If you carry a tank, your tank size sets how many vehicles you can do before refilling, and that is a scheduling fact with a dollar value. Runoff is the other half of the same problem: EPA’s stormwater guidance for vehicle washing is that wash water should not be discharged to a storm drain or surface water, and should instead go to sanitary sewer where the authority permits it, to treatment, to a land application area, or be recycled on site — the practices are summarized in EPA’s vehicle maintenance and washing BMP sheet. In practice that pushes mobile work toward rinseless methods and reclaim mats, and both are legitimate line items.

Power is the second. A 2,000-watt inverter runs a vacuum; it does not run a heated extractor and a polisher at the same time. Generators solve that and create a noise problem in a neighborhood at eight in the morning.

Temperature and shade are the third, and they are not comfort issues. Polish flashes and coatings behave unpredictably on hot panels in direct sun, so a driveway with no shade at two in the afternoon in July is not a coating environment. Put a shade or garage requirement on the estimate for any mobile correction or coating work.

Access is the fourth: a level surface, room to open all four doors, and permission. Apartment complexes and HOAs frequently prohibit detailing in the lot, and learning that on arrival is a wasted trip.

Travel gets its own line, priced per mile beyond an included radius or by zone. Those miles also matter at tax time, and the current IRS mileage rate is worth knowing before you decide whether to bill travel or absorb it.

How do I price from bay-hours instead of copying a menu?

Because your capacity is hours, not cars, and a menu copied from another market prices someone else’s rent.

Start with billable capacity. A nine-hour day for one technician is not nine billable hours. Setup, chemical mixing, pad washing, customer conversation, quoting, and teardown eat roughly an hour and a half, which leaves about seven and a half productive hours. Divide your monthly fixed cost — rent or truck payment, insurance, utilities, water, software, phone, advertising — by the productive hours you actually sell in a month, and you have the floor under every quote.

Then add consumables, which in detailing are unusually real and unusually forgotten.

Consumable	Why it belongs in the job cost
Polishing pads	A one-step on a class-4 vehicle consumes several pads, and pads have a finite wash life
Compound and polish	Measured in ounces per vehicle, and correction work uses far more than a finishing pass
Coating	Sold by the milliliter; a 30 ml bottle covers roughly one mid-size vehicle for one layer
Microfiber laundering	A full detail generates 25 to 40 towels that have to be washed separately
Extraction chemical and water	Per vehicle, and it climbs with condition
Tape, applicators, and blades	Small, constant, and invisible until you total a year

Now set the price by margin rather than by adding a percentage. If a class-4 correction and coating costs you $940 in labor hours and consumables and you want to keep 40 percent of the invoice, divide by 0.60 and quote $1,566. Adding 40 percent to cost gets you $1,316 and a 28.6 percent margin — the same intention, nearly $250 less in your pocket, on one car. Detailing runs enough volume that the difference compounds fast, and it is the same money you will be setting aside when you work out how much to hold back for 1099 taxes.

Market ranges are worth glancing at and worth nothing more. The spread between a solo mobile operator in a small market and a coating-certified shop in a metro is wider than any table could describe, and correction and coating pricing in particular varies more than any other service in the trade. Your bay-hour cost is the only number that decides whether the job worked.

What has to be on the estimate about cure time and aftercare?

Everything the customer has to do after they drive away, because a coating warranty fails on aftercare more often than on product.

State the time in your care in days and hours, up front. A class-4 vehicle getting decontamination, a one-step polish, a coating, and an interior deep clean is roughly eighteen and a half hands-on hours — two working days, plus cure time. That is a transportation decision for the customer, not a footnote.

Then state the cure conditions plainly: how many hours the vehicle must stay dry and indoors after coating, how long before the first wash, the wash method that will not strip it, and the inspection appointment that keeps the warranty alive. For interiors, say that extracted carpet stays damp for hours and that a wet interior in a closed car in summer is how mildew starts.

What does a filled-in auto detailing estimate look like?

A 2021 three-row SUV, class 4, mobile at the customer’s driveway, with severe pet hair in the second and third rows.

The rates below are placeholders so the structure is readable. Substitute your own bay-hour cost, your own consumables, and your own overhead.

ESTIMATE #AD-2026-0298 Halcyon Detail Co. Vehicle: 2021 three-row SUV · Class 4 · Odometer 61,480 Prepared July 24, 2026 · Valid through August 23, 2026 · Location: customer driveway, shaded

#	Description	Basis	Amount
1	Exterior decontamination — foam, wheels and wells, iron remover, chemical and mechanical decon	Class 4, 2.5 hrs	$145.00
2	One-step machine polish — all painted panels, trim taped, IPA wipedown	Class 4, 6 hrs	$525.00
3	Ceramic coating — consumer-grade, single layer, plus glass and exterior trim	Class 4, 3 hrs	$695.00
4	Interior deep clean — three rows, hot-water extraction, leather clean and condition, headliner spotting, vents, jambs	Class 4, 4.5 hrs	$325.00
5	Pet hair removal — severe, second and third rows plus cargo area	2.5 hrs @ $75.00	$187.50
6	Mobile setup — reclaim mat, generator, water supply	Per visit	$45.00
	Total	18.5 hands-on hours	$1,922.50

Condition clause: pricing assumes normal soiling for the vehicle’s age. Pet hair was assessed in person and is included above at the severe tier. Smoke odor, mold, and biological contamination are not included and would be quoted separately before any work begins.

Correction note: one-step polish removes a substantial portion of light swirl marks and haze. Deeper scratches, sanding marks, and defects through the clear coat will not be removed. Final correction is confirmed after a test section and a paint thickness reading.

Not included: engine bay cleaning, headlight restoration, wheels-off cleaning, trim restoration, ozone treatment, upholstery repair, paint chip touch-up, undercarriage.

Time and cure: two working days on site. Vehicle must remain dry and under cover for 24 hours after coating. No wash for seven days. First maintenance wash by hand with a pH-neutral soap, no automatic car washes. Return in seven days for the coating inspection, which is included.

Site requirements: shade or a garage bay, a level surface with room to open all doors, and a 20-amp outlet if the generator is not used. Correction and coating are not performed in direct sun on hot panels.

Travel: included within 15 miles. Beyond that, $1.10 per mile round trip.

What happens to the paperwork when they hand over the keys?

The estimate becomes an invoice, the invoice becomes a payment, and the pile of consumable receipts becomes the thing that decides what you actually earned this year. Pads, coatings, chemicals, towels, and the extractor you financed all land in specific places on your return, which is what Schedule C line items are about.

Keel is an iOS app that runs entirely on your device: no account, no bank connection, no cloud, no login, and an App Store privacy label that reads Data Not Collected. At handover you can raise the invoice from your phone in about a minute — your logo, your numbering, your brand color, and a payment link the customer scans as a QR code while they are still looking at the car. The distributor order, the coating bottle, the pad box, and the laundromat run get photographed and read on device by Apple Intelligence, so a year of small consumable spend is filed instead of lost. Mobile work turns the drive into a large part of the business, and every trip between driveways is recordable. Free covers unlimited invoices, receipts, and mileage; Keel Pro is a one-time $249.99 Lifetime purchase rather than a subscription. You can get it on the App Store.

Frequently asked questions

How do I price a detail by vehicle size?

Build classes from what your hands touch: door jambs, seat rows, glass area, roof height, and wheel design. A two-row crossover runs about 1.25 times a compact sedan, a three-row SUV or minivan about 1.45 to 1.6, and a full-size or lifted pickup about 1.5 to 1.7. Apply that multiplier to a package whose hours you have actually timed.

Should pet hair be an extra charge on a detailing estimate?

Yes, and as a conditional line rather than a bundled assumption. Light to moderate hair adds 45 to 90 minutes before extraction can start. Severe hair woven into cloth seats adds two to four hours and sometimes requires seat removal. Assess it in person at drop-off, quote the tier, and get approval before starting rather than absorbing it silently.

How long does a ceramic coating job take start to finish?

Count hands-on hours plus cure time. A class-4 vehicle getting decontamination, a one-step polish, coating application, and an interior deep clean is roughly eighteen hours of work, which is two working days. Add the cure window: typically dry and under cover for the first 24 hours, and no washing for about a week. State both on the estimate.

What should a detailing estimate say about paint correction results?

Give a range, not a promise. A one-step clears much of the light swirling but leaves deeper marks. Write that final correction depth is determined after a test section and a paint thickness reading, that some defects go through the clear coat and cannot be removed safely, and that any deeper correction is re-quoted before it is performed.

Do I need to charge extra for mobile detailing?

Charge for the setup and the drive separately from the service. Mobile work adds water transport, power, a reclaim mat or rinseless method to keep wash water out of storm drains, and a shade requirement for polishing and coating. Include travel within a stated radius and bill per mile beyond it, since two hours of driving is two hours you did not detail.

How much should I charge per hour for auto detailing?

Work it out from capacity rather than copying a menu. A nine-hour day yields about seven and a half productive hours after setup, pad washing, quoting, and teardown. Divide your monthly fixed costs by the productive hours you genuinely sell, add consumables per vehicle, then divide by one minus your target margin — not by adding a markup percentage to cost.

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This article is general information, not professional or tax advice.