How to price a job: the costing method trades actually get right
Most tradespeople don’t lose money on bad jobs — they lose it on jobs priced in the van in ninety seconds, from a gut feel calibrated years ago. Pricing is a method, not a talent. Here’s the build-up that keeps every job profitable, and the mistakes that quietly turn busy months into broke ones.
The four-part build-up
Every solid price is the sum of four layers:
- Labour: realistic hours × your charge-out rate — including travel, setup, tidy-up and the return visit for snags, not just tool time
- Materials: actual cost plus a handling markup (10–25% is normal) — sourcing, collecting, storing and warranting materials is work
- Overhead recovery: a share of the van, insurance, scheme fees, tools and software attached to every job, not just remembered at year end
- Margin: profit on top, deliberately — profit is what funds the slow weeks, the new van and the reason you’re in business
The mistakes that eat margins
- Quoting from optimism: pricing the best-case job, when the wall is never straight and the stopcock never turns
- Forgetting non-tool time: a “one-day job” with two merchant runs and a skip delivery is a day and a half
- Marking up nothing: passing materials through at cost gives away real work for free
- Matching the lowest quote: someone in every area is pricing their way out of business — let them win those jobs
- Never reviewing: track quoted hours against actual hours for a month and your estimating recalibrates itself
Fixed price or day rate?
Fixed prices win domestic work: customers value certainty and will often pay more for it, and efficiency becomes your profit rather than the customer’s discount. The discipline is scoping — a fixed price needs a written scope, stated exclusions, and a process for pricing variations before doing them.
Day rates suit genuinely open-ended work: fault-finding, opening up old buildings, working under another trade’s programme. If you use one, agree what a “day” is and invoice against it promptly.
When to walk away
Some jobs are priced right at zero: the customer who beat down three other trades before calling you, the scope that changes on every phone call, the “can you just” project with no drawings and no budget. A polite “we’re not the right fit for this one” is free; the alternative can cost weeks.
From price to signed quote in minutes
A good price loses to a fast one if it arrives three days later. TradeHub OS lets you build the quote on your phone — labour, materials and margin itemised or rolled up, as you prefer — and send it before you leave the drive, with online Accept & Sign and automatic chasing if the customer goes quiet.
This guide is general information for UK trades and landlords, not legal advice. Always refer to the current regulations and official guidance from the HSE, Gas Safe Register or your competent-person scheme.
