How to write a valid MCS heat pump quote

If you recently passed your MCS or are looking to take on more heat pump work, you might be wondering what you need to do to ensure your quotes pass muster.

There’s a lot to think about.

You’ve got all the MCS requirements that need to be met, as well as the necessary steps for securing the government BUS grant, not to mention the actual process of pricing and selling the heat pump.

That’s why we’ve written this article, to give you clear steps, tips and advice on how to create a heat pump quote that will look professional and tick all the right boxes.

If you’re looking for clarification on whether or not you need an MCS to work on heat pumps we’ve got you covered in our MCS article.

Before you create the quote

The first thing you need to get right is your initial conversation with the customer.

MCS requires you to follow a number of best practices to ensure the customer is protected.

This starts with clear terms and conditions, a signed contract and a defined cancellation policy.

Cancellation requirements

Before you proceed with the job you need to ensure the customer understands the cancellation policy and has agreed to the terms of work.

You must clearly lay out the following:

• How the customer can cancel
• Any costs incurred from cancellation
• An ‘express request’ if you intend to start work within the cancellation period

Customers are entitled to cancel at any point within a 14-day window. This cancellation period starts the day after the last piece of equipment relating to the job has been delivered.

This means if you want to start work within that 14-day cancellation period, you will need to get a formal agreement from the customer. This is the ‘express request’.

The customer can still cancel within the 14-day period but the ‘express request’ ensures that you can claim back the cost of the work completed, up to the point when the cancellation was made.

Keeping the customer informed

There are a number of details you should keep your customer informed on. Most of these are obvious but there are some requirements you should be aware of.

You need to ensure the customer has the following:

• A completed MCS Heat Pump System Performance Estimate
• An explanation of the costs and benefits of achieving a higher SCOP/SPER
• A breakdown of how flow temperature affects efficiency
• A full heat loss and room-by-room site survey
• Information on any permissions, approvals and licences that may be required
• Any information about incentive schemes

The law prohibits any misleading omissions, so if in doubt let the customer know. You should try to explain all information relating to the installation in an approachable and understandable way.

Remember, you are responsible for ensuring the customer has all the necessary information when proceeding with a heat pump installation and it is down to you to ensure they know what is going on.

The Renewable Energy Consumer Code provides a thorough breakdown of all the information you need to provide for the customer before during and after the installation.

Pressuring the sale

It should go without saying that you shouldn’t pressurise any potential customer into signing a contract or accepting a quote.

The MCS guidelines are very clear that customers should be fully informed and fully empowered when making a decision.

As an installer, it is your responsibility to ensure the customer feels at ease and is not under pressure to proceed.

What needs to be included in an MCS heat pump quote?

Now you know the requirements before you create the proposal it’s time to think about what should actually go into an MCS heat pump quote.

According to the RECC rules a heat pump estimate should include the following:

1. An itemised list of goods that will be supplied.
2. Prices of individual goods and any services (shown separately). Safety checks and taxes should also be included.
3. An itemised list of the survey, design, installation and other services.
4. Any non-quoted items and services the customer will need to provide.
5. Details of any site conditions or special circumstances that might affect the project.
6. Any additional metering and monitoring services the consumer must pay for.
7. A timetable for the supply of goods and the carrying out of work at the property.
8. Business terms, including the payment method, schedule, quote validity period, and any other conditions.
9. Completion dates for the installation of the energy generator.
10. The performance estimate.

To summarise this, essentially you need to make sure your quote is clearly laid out with adequate terms on the quote. You need to include your different items (which will be the heat pump and pump cylinder) and you should display your labour too. All this should be included with prices clearly displayed for each part of the quote.

If you need help designing your pricing process then this article on how to price a heat pump takes you through how experienced installer Michael Paini’s goes about it.

Deposits and staged payments

Given the high value of any heat pump installation, you will need to take a deposit to cover the cost of the materials for the job and to protect your business financially.

You may also want to take an additional payment before any materials are delivered to the customer's home.

This is standard procedure for any heat pump installation, however, there are clear rules around this from the RECC.

First of all, no deposit should exceed 25% of the cost of the installation. You are permitted to take a further upfront payment, however, the total value of this (including the deposit) cannot exceed 60% of the total project value.

Furthermore, when taking any advanced payments, these should only be taken within 21 days of the parts for the job being delivered.

This leaves you a final 40% that needs to be paid after the work is complete.

However, these payments do not take into account the value of the BUS grant so you will need to consider that in your quoting process.

Accounting for the BUS grant

One of the challenges of quoting for heat pumps is how you handle the BUS grant.

Currently, in the UK, a person can claim £7500 towards any new heat pump or biomass boiler that they have fitted for the first time at their property.

However, the money from the grant isn’t provided upfront, which means you have to structure the quote to account for the grant when it comes in later in the process.

As we mentioned above, you can take up to a maximum of 60% of the value of a heat pump installation but this doesn’t include the Boiler Upgrade Scheme.

This means if you take too much in the initial upfront payments, you could be in a situation in which you have to offer a refund once the grant comes in.

To avoid this, you need to subtract the cost of the grant from the total price of the installation and then take 60% of that number.

For example, if your install was worth £17,000 and you were to split it 25%, 35%, 40% the first 60% would be worth £10,200 and the final 40% would be £6,800.

This would leave you an excess of £700 from the grant that you would then have to pay back. You would have taken too much in your first two payments.

To avoid having to process a refund you can subtract the £7,500 from the total cost, leaving you with £9,500 to split across that 25% and 35%, ensuring no final payment needs to be taken.

Of course, if the value of the installation is great enough, then you won’t need to worry about the refund. As a minimum, the project needs to be worth at least £18,750 for the value of the BUS grant to be absorbed.

This is all well and good but when you’re creating your quote, you still need to have the correct total figure, which means you can’t just remove the £7,500 from the price. Instead, you need to adjust the percentages.

I’m sure you’re probably thinking this all sounds like an awful lot of effort to just put some prices on a quote but don’t worry, we’ve made it easy for you. We have a free spreadsheet you can use that will calculate the percentages you need based on the total price of your installation.

Send us an email and we will share that with you.

Using quote templates

You may still be thinking that even with our handy spreadsheet, quoting a heat pump sounds like a complex and time-consuming process… and you would be right.

Heat pumps are high-value pieces of tech which require a high degree of technical understanding and attention to detail. The quoting process requires you to include a lot of information and present it in a digestible way.

The good news is there is a simple shortcut you can use to make delivering a quality quote so much easier. It’s reliable, repeatable and makes your quotes look engaging and professional.

Enter proposal templates.

Proposal templates do what they say on the tin. They allow you to save the key parts of a quote as a template meaning all those repeatable parts can be saved and replicated very quickly.

Payaca are leading the way in this regard. Within Payaca’s CRM software, you can design your perfect heat pump quote and save it as a template. You can also save the different parts that you sell and drop them into your quote in a couple of clicks.

What this means is that something that could take you 1 hour instead takes you 5 minutes (if that). What’s more, you can add images to your proposals which makes it easier to sell to your customers.

There’s also your payment schedule. Ideally, you would be able to set up your staged payment percentages ahead of sending the quote and automatically invoice each stage straight from the quote.

Well, with Payaca you can. All you need to do is add the percentages for each stage and Payaca will calculate it all for you.

Of course, you could do all of this manually, but it will be a hell of a lot easier using a digital system.

If you’re curious this video shows you how it works.

After the proposal

The heat pump process involves multiple stages, from the initial assessment, heat loss survey, estimate and invoices. It’s important to get all these parts right and handle the whole process with transparency and professionalism.

After you have sent your quote and processed your invoices you should ensure you have a suitable guarantee in place. The RECC states that this should last a minimum of 2 years and cover any issues that occur as a product of the installation process.

You can also offer additional guarantees such as an output guarantee that promises that the system will work at an efficiency of x%. This is at your own discretion.

For more information on the rules, recommendations and requirements for MCS installers check out the MCS Heat Pump Guide and the Renewable Energy Consumer Code.

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