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Coastal SD ProsHomeowner templates
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Templates for the person paying for the work, not the person doing it.

A contractor runs a business and has a shelf of forms for it. A homeowner runs one project, once, with no forms at all — and then wonders why three quotes will not line up and why nobody wrote down what was agreed on the Tuesday. These are the documents on the other side of that table. Fill one in here, or print it blank and write on it. Either way you take it away; none of it comes to us.

The library, in the order you will need it

  • Scope brief

    The same job description, word for word, to every company you ask. Three prices only compare when three companies priced the same work, which makes this the document everything else on this page depends on.

    It also keeps your own record of which company received it and when — so you know who has had it and who is late.

    Before you ask for a single price

  • Walkthrough question list

    Twenty questions to ask while the contractor is standing in the room, with a box under each one for what you were actually told. Print it and take it with you.

    It does not tell you what a good answer sounds like and it grades nobody. It just makes sure the cheap questions get asked while they are still cheap.

    During the site visit

  • Bid comparison sheet

    Three bids side by side, with the rows set to what each one includes and leaves out — permits, haul-off, site protection, patch and paint, old-unit removal, brands and models, labour by phase, named subs, the change-order process — rather than to the totals.

    There is no total row and no score. Every line a bid has not answered comes back as a question you can send.

    When the written bids arrive

  • Project log

    Dates, who was on site, what changed, what was agreed and by whom. Five minutes at the end of each working day.

    It is the template nobody wants until the day somebody says "we discussed that" about a conversation nobody wrote down.

    While the work is happening

What is not in this library, and why

There is no contract template here. No contract, no payment-schedule form carrying figures, no lien notice, no letter of demand. A document that looks official gets signed, and a template that tells you what a contract must contain is legal advice however carefully it is worded. Coastal SD Pros is not a law firm and will not act like one. The tool that came closest to this line was removed for exactly this reason.

There is no payment planner here either. It was considered and left out. Every honest version of it ends up stating what a deposit or a final payment should be, and that is the same problem in a friendlier font. What survives is the question rather than the plan: the bid comparison sheet asks whether each payment in a bid is tied to a named piece of completed work, and the walkthrough list asks the contractor what each payment is tied to. For what the rules actually require, read CSLB's own pages — they are the ones who keep them current.

No template here scores, grades or ranks a business. Not one of them produces a total, a rating, a star or a verdict about a company, and that is a permanent decision rather than a gap waiting to be filled. What they record is what a document says and what a day contained. What that is worth is yours to judge.

The templates and the tools are two halves of the same job

A template is a document you take away. A tool works something out while you are here. They overlap on purpose, and where they overlap you should use whichever fits the day you are having.

  • Get three comparable quotes — the guided version of the scope brief. It asks for a plumbing job type and drops that job's own inclusion list into the text. Use it when the job is plumbing and you want the wording chosen for you; use the scope brief template when you want a trade-neutral blank you can print or keep as a file.
  • Quote gap analyzer — one bid taken to depth, with lines specific to your project type. Use it on the bid you are closest to accepting; use the bid comparison sheet to see all three at once.
  • Read a CSLB record — what a public licence record does and does not tell you, before you let anyone into the house.
  • All the homeowner tools — including the record comparison and the coastal maintenance checklist.

How these handle what you type

Every template runs entirely in your browser. Your answers are saved on the device you are using so you can come back to them, and each page has a button that clears them. Nothing is uploaded, nothing is emailed, and no template has anywhere to send anything: there is no server behind them, no analytics on your answers and no contractor on the other end. When you download a file, it is built on your device from what you typed.

Because they live in one browser, download a copy of anything you would be sorry to lose — particularly the project log, which is worth most when it runs over weeks.

Important. Coastal SD Pros is a Roscoe Equity LLC publication and homeowner information service. Editorial decisions are independent of advertising and Roscoe Site Pro client status. It is not a contractor, regulator, insurer, law firm or emergency service. These templates are general information, not legal advice, and none is a contract or any part of one. Rules and public records change; confirm anything that matters on CSLB's own pages before signing.