Clarifications & exclusions

The second tab in Review, Clarifications & Exclusions, is where you write the notes that travel with the tender itself — not notes about one cell or one subcontractor, but statements the client reads alongside your price.

Two kinds

• A clarification states an assumption or a condition your price is based on — something you want on record so there's no ambiguity about what was priced.
• An exclusion states something your price doesn't cover.

Both are short, plain statements. Keep them specific enough that anyone reading the submission later — the client, or your own team months on — understands exactly what was assumed or left out, without having to come back and ask.

Why this is separate from a sub's own exclusions

A subcontractor's exclusions list, kept against their quote in Quote Comparison, is what that sub told you they don't cover — a working record for comparing quotes. Clarifications & Exclusions is the tender's own voice: what you, the estimator, are telling the client. The two aren't the same list, and one doesn't automatically populate the other. See Notes & exclusions for the sub-quote side of this.

Build it as you go

Add these whenever a decision needs recording, rather than leaving it to the end — a clarification the moment you make an assumption, an exclusion the moment a trade tells you something isn't in their scope. Reconstructing the list from memory once the tender's due tomorrow is how the ones that mattered get left out.

A clarification pulls its weight most on the assumptions a client would otherwise take for granted differently to how you priced them — access, working hours, who supplies what, whether an item is new or an allowance for existing conditions. An exclusion earns its place the same way: state the specific thing that's out, not a general caveat that leaves the client guessing what it actually covers.

Where it ends up

Clarifications and exclusions written here appear in the submission document — see Submission pack for what the finished document looks like, and how you control what's shown.