Programming Bid Template

Who uses a template to document a new project that lists the common structure of the programming, custom design features, and functionality then breaks down the time to determine what to bid for the job (project)?

I find myself wishing for something like this regularly since I seem to never get the required/estimated hours to complete something correctly. Rarely do I come out to the good.

Please share if you are using an out of the box application or if you made your own spreadsheet.

What should be the top ten major considerations to development time.

I need to make money if I am to continue, the quality of the work is not the problem, the price of rice and beans is. :o

The biggest thing I have a problem with is accounting for meeting time and changes/rework. I do more than just development, so that is only one small piece of the puzzle for me. I notice that there is still a lot of "gut feeling" that goes into my estimates and sometimes my gut is wrong. It's all about learning from your experience.

One thing that I have found to mitigate some of the risk is to get customers to agree on doing some/all of the discovery as a separate initial contract (A day or two to a few weeks depending on size). That way you have all of the information you need prior to even starting a design and you can get more accurate numbers in your second contract, which is the contract for the work being performed.