How do contractors handle charging markups on materials without feeling guilty?
How do you get over the “guilt” of product markups. Of course when you’re offering a service that includes a product or material there’s going to be markups involved, but I always feel like I’m doing something wrong, almost like they’re going to go to the store and come back with “you charged me $17 per unit when the store only charged me $15 per” is there a way to get over this?
Do you know your actual effective hourly rate per client — once travel time is included?
Hi everyone — I'm a developer, not a cleaning business owner, so I'll be upfront about that. I'm doing early research before building anything. I've been spending time in this community and something keeps catching my eye. There are a lot of conversations about pricing, undercharging, and knowing your numbers — but the specific gap I keep noticing is this: Jobber shows you revenue per job, but it doesn't tell you your real effective hourly rate per client once you factor in drive time and how long a job actually ran versus what you quoted. For a residential cleaning business with recurring clients, that seems like it could matter a lot. The client who pays $200 but takes 45 minutes to drive to might look identical in Jobber to a client who pays $180 and is 5 minutes away. My question, specifically for cleaning business owners using Jobber: is this actually a problem you run into? Are you tracking profitability per client in any way right now — spreadsheet, gut feel, something else? And if you're not tracking it, is that because it's genuinely not a priority, or because there's no easy way to do it inside Jobber? Not selling anything — I haven't built anything yet. I'd genuinely love to have a 15-minute conversation with a few people who manage recurring residential clients in Jobber. Happy to share what I learn with anyone who's interested. Drop a comment or DM me.What services can I offer during winter to keep income coming in?
I am currently working a full-time job while running my company. How do I earn income in the “winter” months in Kentucky? We may have one snow a year, grass doesn’t grow, to cold to pressure wash. Everyone kinda goes hermit, thanks in advanceHow Is My Pricing Sheet?
So before I started my company, I've had 16+ years in Property Management and Construction, so I know how the day to day operations and such go. I decided to make a dedicated pricing sheet for my walk in introductions with communities. Do you guys see anything that I should adjust or change?
How do you stay profitable when your schedule is fully booked?
Early on, I thought the goal was simple: fill the schedule. More customers = more money. But I hit a point where my days were completely packed—15+ stops, driving all over my service area—and I still felt like I wasn’t getting ahead. Long days, constant movement, but nothing to show for it at the end of the month. So I finally broke it down. I looked at: Time per yard (from the moment I parked to when I left for the next house, not just scooping) Average yards per hour $ per minute - (if I was in someone's yard for 10 minutes and I charged them $20, I made $2 a minute) Labor cost per hour (real cost, not just hourly wage. I had to treat myself as an employee if I was ever going to hire someone) What I realized was brutal: Some of my “full” days were actually my least profitable days. Too much windshield time. Underpriced customers locked into old rates. Routes that made no sense geographically. Fixing that didn’t come from adding more leads. It came from: Raising prices on the right customers Letting go of the wrong ones Tightening routes so stops actually made sense together That shift did more for profit than any marketing I had done up to that point. Question: If you had to guess right now... what’s hurting your profitability more: Pricing Route inefficiency Labor cost Something else And what makes you say that?
