Home staging estimates and invoices, from consultation to destage.

Price the consultation, install, rental and destage apart.

Home staging software has to split a staging job into the pieces a seller can understand. Quote it as one number and the seller reads the whole thing as a furniture bill and balks. Break it out instead: the consultation and the written staging plan, the install (vacant, or styling an occupied home), the monthly rental, the accessory packages and the destage and pickup.

Charge for the consultation. Giving it away to win the job and then losing the job anyway is two hours you do not get back. As its own line with a written plan as the deliverable, it is worth paying for whether or not the seller books the install.

In Jobkore every line has its own unit. Load the Home Staging trade pack and your catalog starts with consultations, written plans, vacant installs for a whole home or per room, occupied styling per room, accessory packages, monthly rental, 30-day extensions, destage and pickup, rush destage, delivery and truck fees, extra trips, furniture rearrangement and photo-day touch-ups. Set each price once, and every estimate starts from your numbers.

The rental term and the extension rate, in writing.

The seller's real question is whether staging will help the house sell faster, and what it costs if it does not sell fast. Put the second half in writing: the rental term, the date it ends, and the rate for each 30-day extension. Without a written extension rate, a house that sits for 90 days turns every renewal into a negotiation.

Price the destage in the original quote. It is real labor and a real truck, and forgetting it means absorbing both at the end. If the house closes faster than the notice period, a rush destage fee belongs on the estimate too.

Make clear the furniture is on loan. It is your inventory, sitting in a house you do not control, which is why it gets paid for before it goes in.

Name who pays before the truck is loaded.

Staging sits between the agent and the seller, and "the seller will pay" said by an agent is not a signature. Decide who pays which part (the agent, the seller or a split) and make the payer the client on the estimate, so the person who owes the money is the one who signs it online.

If the agent pays for the consultation and the seller pays for the install and rental, send two estimates, one to each, so each is signed by the person who pays for it. It keeps the agent's and the seller's money separate from the start.

Put your terms on the estimate as well: access and lockbox arrangements, what happens if the crew cannot get in on the scheduled day, and the damage and loss terms for items broken during showings. More on keeping clients organized.

Photograph the inventory, going in and coming out.

A scratched console at pickup is your word against the agent's unless you photographed it at install. Add condition photos to the invoice at install and again at destage: up to 20 on the document and 6 on a single line. It is the cheapest insurance you have.

Price delivery access honestly. Stairs, an elevator, a long carry to the front door, or an HOA with move-in windows all change the labor, and a vacant install priced off square footage alone will miss them. Note which rooms are in scope, too; buyers notice an unstaged primary bedroom.

Schedule listing photos after the install is complete, not during, and note it on the estimate so the agent books the photographer for the right day.

Paid before install, extensions as they come.

Most stagers are paid before or at install, since the furniture is leaving your warehouse. Put the install and the first rental period on one invoice with a payment schedule if you split them, each row named and dated, and the client pays by card or bank transfer from the invoice link. Stripe charges its standard rate and Jobkore adds nothing on top.

When the house sits past the term, add the extension as a change order on the invoice at the rate you already wrote down. The client signs it online and the invoice total moves to include it. Late payments get reminders at 1, 7 and 14 days.

Invoices and payments sync one way to QuickBooks Online.

Hank knows the staging traps.

Jobkore includes Hank AI™, an assistant that knows the trade you picked at signup. Tell him the job by typing or with a voice memo: vacant three-bedroom, stage living, dining, kitchen, primary bedroom and one guest room, second-floor bedrooms, 60-day term, seller pays install and rental, agent paid for the consultation. He drafts the estimate with the install, rental, destage and extension terms, priced from your catalog first.

Turn on a review before sending and he checks it against a staging list: install and rental quoted as one number, no destage line, no written extension rate, no damage terms, stairs or HOA windows not priced. He can add the missing line and never changes your prices in a review.

Jobkore does estimates, change orders, invoices and payments, on your phone, in English or Spanish. Related trades: cleaning, moving and hauling and painting. See the pricing page.