I am wondering if someone could point me in the right direction or would be willing to consult with me for pay in setting up a flat rate pricing system for my residential service customers. This would be something along the lines of how a Mr. Sparky or similar would do. I understand that I could buy into a franchise and presumably get all the info I need but residential service is not my main form of electrical contracting and I only plan on having 1-2 service persons on staff. I have looked for pricing books and have founds some software that seems cheap or not user friendly and its not working for me.Would love any advice, direction or better yet someone who would be willing to consult with me on this project or at least share a few emails.
Pricing varies with area, but when I must charge hourly (troubleshooting), I charge $150 for the first hour, $100 per hour after that.
I base flat-priced work on those numbers, using the worst-case scenario for unknowns. It's easier to lower a price than raise it.
I found this one online. You have to adjust some things for sure (material) but it’s been a decent tool to use.
That is based on an hourly rate of 149$ and 30% material markup on first task and 10% after. That’s not enough either. Here lately I’ve been doing a takeoff on material and doubling it, then using the hours to multiply by hourly rate. And sometimes I first task every job. Depends on how busy you are.
I think some of this stuff you're just going to have to work out as you go. I think you're going to find first service work that it's an expensive business to get into because a lot of your time is going to be spent basically doing sales work on relatively small jobs that even if you charge what you think is a lot you won't make a whole lot of money on. If you spend a couple hours of overhead on a job that only lasts an hour or two you going to have to find a way to recover that time that you spent that you can't charge for.
I think people worry way too much about the mechanism by which they price things. Those are really rules of thumb that I think you can only come by with experience.
For instance, I don't see how you can afford to come out to a job site for free. I think you have to charge some number just to show up and the number just goes up from there.
People do not like surprises, but until you get there it is very hard to know what you're going to have to actually do. I think you also have to be pretty mercenary about what you do when you get there. If you agreed to install a light fixture for $200, that is all you should do while you are there. If they need a replacement outlet, you need to charge them whatever your fee is for that. If you start working for free because you feel sorry for your customers you will go broke.