How to price jobs without guessing
Most underquoting isn't generosity. It's missing information at quoting time. Here's a simple structure for pricing trade jobs that protects your margin.
Ask ten tradies how they price a job and you'll get ten versions of the same answer: experience, gut feel, and a quick look at the site. That works well right up until it doesn't: an access problem you didn't spot, a second visit you didn't allow for, materials that went up 12% since last time.
Underquoting is rarely about being too cheap on labour rates. It's about the parts of the job that never made it into the quote at all. The fix isn't a spreadsheet with more decimal places. It's making sure the same handful of questions gets answered before any number goes out the door.
The five parts every quote needs
- Labour: hours on the tools, at the rate for whoever is actually doing the work, not your best tech's speed at your apprentice's rate.
- Materials: current prices, plus a wastage allowance. If prices move often, date-stamp the quote and say how long it's valid.
- Access and travel: parking, height, crawl spaces, distance. The jobs that blow out are almost always the ones that were hard to get at.
- Second visits: inspections, cure times, parts on order. If there's any chance of a return trip, price it in or exclude it explicitly.
- Margin: profit is a line item, not whatever happens to be left over. Decide your margin before you discount anything.
Write down why, not just what
A quote that says "Replace hot water cylinder, $2,850" invites haggling. A quote that lists what's included, what's excluded, and what happens if the unexpected shows up gets accepted more often and argued less. Customers don't mind paying for things they understand.
Keep every quote attached to the job record, with the site photos and notes that shaped the price. When a similar job comes up, you're pricing from evidence instead of memory.
Review the misses monthly
Once a month, pull up the jobs that ran over. Not to assign blame, but to find the pattern. Is it always the same job type? The same suburb with terrible access? The same supplier's parts arriving late? One recurring cause fixed at quoting time is worth more than any margin tweak.
Pricing well isn't a talent some people are born with. It's a checklist run consistently, with the numbers kept where the next quote can find them.