How do contractors price jobs based on actual business costs instead of competitor rates?
We run a contracting business in Juneau, Alaska. It’s a remote town with no roads in or out, so our market does not work like most places. Lead generation is not our problem. The work is there. Our bigger challenge is filtering demand, choosing the right jobs, and pricing from the actual cost of running the business instead of just asking, “what does everyone else charge?” That has changed how we look at pricing. Two companies can do the same job with completely different numbers behind it: equipment payments, fuel, insurance, payroll, repairs, debt, admin time, material costs, disposal, taxes, and risk. Competitor pricing matters, but only to a point. If our cost structure is different, their price can’t be our whole pricing strategy. We have a CPA and bookkeeper we trust, so the books are not something we’re guessing on. What we’re working on now is turning the P&L and balance sheet into real-world pricing decisions: what the equipment needs to bill, what materials need to carry, what minimums make sense, and which jobs are actually worth putting on the schedule. We’ve also been using AI to organize that information into pricing structures, quote templates, equipment rates, per-ton pricing, material pricing, and job-type frameworks. To be clear, we’re not using AI to tell us what to charge. We’re using it to organize what we already know, pressure-test assumptions, run simulations, and find holes before they show up in the bank account. The more we work through it, the more we wonder how often underpricing comes from not having a clear link between pricing and the actual cost of running the business. Curious how others think about this. When you price work, do you start with your own numbers first, the market first, or a mix of both? For those using AI, have you used it for pricing, estimating, job costing, or financial review beyond emails and marketing content?Standard Price Book Strategy - How do you make standardized prices with unstandardized Projects?
I've been thinking a lot about quoting speed lately and wanted to open this up for discussion. As a GC, almost every project I take on looks different from the last — different scopes, different conditions, different moving parts. That makes it hard to build a price book the way a trade contractor might, where you're doing the same tasks repeatedly. But I know quoting faster would help me and my team tremendously. Right now we're rebuilding estimates from scratch too often, and I feel like there's a better way. So my question for the group is: do any of you have a price book built out while doing GC work or anything with a lot of project variability? If so, how did you structure it? Are you pricing at the unit level, bundling common scopes into packages, or something else entirely? And how do you handle the stuff that doesn't fit neatly — older buildings, difficult site conditions, sub pricing you can't fully control? I'm not looking for a perfect system, just something that gets my team quoting faster and more consistently. Curious what's actually working for people in the real world.
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.How can home service businesses improve profit margins without raising prices?
If you had double your profit margin without raising rates, what would you cut or optimize? Our payroll all-in consistently remains at around 50%, but I was hoping to hear what others are doing considering labor is our biggest expense as home service businesses!How can I create an invoice for the deposit?
When doing certain commercial work the client will ask us to send them an invoice for the deposit. This isn't typically how Jobber works as the invoice isn't created until the job is closed usually. What is the best way to send a customer an invoice before having the quote signed, deposit paid, or the job completed? Hope that makes sense. Thanks in advance!How do you calculate delivery fees?
Gas prices are going up drastically!! When should we make the jump to increase delivery fees? Our customer base already complains about delivery fees because we are in the firewood market with a lot of our competitors not being official businesses, they usually just sell wood from their backyard so they are not concerned with overhead. How do you calculate delivery fees? Has anyone ever done a gas surcharge to introduce a hopefully temporary additional charge while prices are high?How Much Should You Really Be Charging?
The number one question I receive is tied directly to the fact, most contractors are still guessing when it comes to pricing. Overhead. Profit. Labor rate. Trip fees. They think just because they throw a number they hear their competitors use, thats all that they need. It may work, but how and what do you divide these funds is just as important for your business health. If you don’t know how to do the math, you’re not building a business. You’re surviving check to check and think you need more work, when you do not. So here’s the plan: This Tuesday & Thursday on IG, I’m walking you through our Contractor Price Builder Worksheet FREE on instagram live. We will cover: - How to calculate your real hourly rate - The difference between markup and margin - Why profit is a non-negotiable - And how to price with confidence Join the session. Bring your numbers.When should businesses increase prices to keep up with rising payroll costs?
When's the last time you updated your pricing model to match your payroll reality? For example, our direct payroll (before tax) is 38% while our indirect payroll is 10%. As of January 2, we increased rates for all recurring clients by 4% to offload the indirect percentage. Going forward, we increased all first-time services by 5%. Thoughts?
