The day you send a customer a quote that looks like every other quote out of Word, with mismatched fonts and a stretched logo, is the day you signal "we're not quite a real business yet." Branded templates fix that, cheaply and permanently.
The minimum useful kit
- Word/Pages letterhead. Logo top-left, company details footer, body copy on-brand typeface. One A4 file.
- Quote / proposal template. Editable. Includes your branding, terms, payment details, and a clear "Accept and sign" mechanism. Saved as DOCX or Pages source plus a clean PDF preview.
- Invoice template. VAT number where applicable, bank details, IBAN, payment terms (e.g. "Payment due 14 days from invoice date").
- Email signature. One HTML signature, simple, mobile-friendly. The single most-seen branded asset in any small business.
- Presentation master. One Keynote/PowerPoint template, 10–15 master slide layouts, on-brand fonts and colours.
- One-page sales sheet. A reference one-pager for the most common service or product. Updated quarterly.
File formats that survive in 2026
- DOCX — universal for editable Word documents. Avoid .doc.
- PDF — for anything you send that you don't want edited (final proposals, signed quotes, contracts).
- Keynote + PPTX — both, ideally, since teams often have a mix of macOS and Windows.
- Plain HTML — for email signatures, NOT a giant inline image.
- PNG and SVG — for the logo assets your team will paste into the templates over the years.
What to actively avoid
- "Fillable PDF" forms. Look slick, break in real life. Customers can't open them on phones; signatures get lost. Use clean PDFs plus a separate Word version they can edit.
- Image-only email signatures. Get blocked by mail clients; can't be searched.
- Decorative footer ornaments. Pretty in the design proof, fiddly in production. Keep templates clean.
- Custom typefaces with no licence to share. The non-designer admin staff opening the file on Windows will see "Calibri." Use system-safe fonts in templates and licensed-for-print fonts in PDFs only.
Budget bands
- €500–€900 for the minimum kit — letterhead, quote template, invoice template, email signature.
- €1,200–€2,200 for a fuller package with presentation master and one-pagers.
- Done in-house if your designer is already producing the brand — usually rolled into the identity project for a few hundred euro extra.