Which of your recurring clients would you lose money on if you counted the drive?
I've been running profit checks by hand for a few small service businesses from their Jobber Visits exports (3 months of visits + wages + a monthly overhead number). Same pattern every time so far: 2 or 3 recurring clients out of 10–15 lose money on every visit once drive time and payroll burden are in, and they're always the ones who haven't had a price change in two years. Two questions for people here with recurring routes: 1. Do you look at profit per client at all today, or only per job type / per month? 2. If you had a ranked list of your clients by profit per visit, what would you actually do with the bottom three: raise, drop, or re-route? Disclosure: I'm building a tool for this (jobpayoff.com) for businesses that use Jobber. It's not an app you connect yet; right now it's me and a spreadsheet, and the profit check is free because I'm trying to learn what owners do with the answer. Happy to run one for anyone who replies.Anyone else realize they were breaking even or losing money after expenses?
I had a phase where we looked “busy” on paper, fully booked, money coming in, but when I actually broke down the numbers, some jobs were barely breaking even. Once I factored in true payroll burden (taxes, workers comp), supplies, insurance, and transaction fees, it was a wake-up call. There were jobs we were doing that felt productive day-to-day but weren’t contributing to profit at all. For us, it came down to tightening up pricing, being more intentional about which jobs we accepted, and really understanding our numbers on a per-job basis (not just overall revenue). Curious if anyone else has gone through this and what changes made the biggest impact for you?How do you calculate your baseline price before sending a quote out?
When you look at a job site, how are you actually building your estimates? Are you pricing based on true operational costs and target profit margins, or are you matching local competitors and hoping there is money left over at the end of the month? Knowing your numbers comes down to a few key questions: What is your true hourly overhead rate? (Total monthly fixed overhead divided by total monthly billable hours) Are you calculating margin or markup? (Markup on cost is not the same as gross profit margin. If you want a 30% margin, multiplying your costs by 1.30 leaves you short at 23%.) What is your minimum shop rate before pulling a rig out of the driveway? How are you handling this in your business?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?
💡FEATURE REQUEST: Price Increases in Products & Services List
Do you increase prices for ongoing customers? Do you know how long it takes me to increase my prices for 700 ongoing clients in my cleaning business? Whether you increase your prices on an annual basis or just as needed in these unpredictable times, it would be easier to make these changes en masse in the Products and Services tab! How would it work? When editing a product or service line item in the Products & Services List, there should be an option to carry that modification over to any existing Jobs that have that line item on it. Currently, this would only update for new jobs created, but I'd love to see a little pop-up that says, "Would you like to change the price for existing Jobs with this line item? Yes/No" Use Case Example: Because I am in the cleaning industry, it will be my primary use case. Let's say you have a minimum price that every client's rate will be at or above. When you create a new job for a recurring customer, you add a line item titled "Minimum Rate + current year," like for 2020: "Minimum Rate 2020," which is $150. You also add another line item based on how your pricing model is set up - in this case, I will use a simple one: "Small House" for $10 "Medium House" for $30 "Large House" for $50 When it's time for your prices to increase, consider the following options: you could decide to raise prices only for people with large houses and keep your minimum rate the same, or you may want to increase the cost for clients who have been with you for more than 5 years. Instead of making this change one client at a time and trying to sort through who the change applies to, I could go to the Products and Services List and find the specific line item I want to modify. Then, I could edit the price in there! Ta Da! You've raised your prices! Why should Jobber care? This would be huge for any business industry that has recurring clients. ServiceTitan, Housecall Pro, and other competitors already have this feature. I have found other threads that mention something like this or frustrations with how to go about raising prices. This would allow businesses that only see customers once or twice a year to set up their customers as recurring with one Job, saving them a lot of time and effort as well. You'd have at least one very loyal customer in me! I've spoken to two support agents who thought this was a simple but fantastic idea! My next price increase is in June, and I'd love you guys if you saved me weeks worth of work in a single click 🤞🙏 QUESTIONS, COMMENTS, FEEDBACK, AND MORE USE CASES WELCOME!!
How do cleaning businesses automatically track job costing and profit margins for recurring clients?
Hi all! In our cleaning business we have a lot of recurring clients with lots of visits for the same job. 85% is recurring and 15% one off jobs. however, the reporting options for job costing and profit margins for recurring jobs are not as good as the one off jobs. there are integrations that will pull live data from jobber and push into google sheets for example - but only using the triggers “job closed” or “job updated”. As most of our jobs never close, we are looking for a visit-based data pull that functions automatically. I have a google sheets dashboard with metrics based on the visits report, but requires Manual data pull daily to track performance. any suggestions? cheers!“Your prices are probably too low.” 💸
Winning almost every job you quote? Gabe Chrismon (Oply) says that could be a sign you’re charging too little. More jobs can keep you busy, but the extra driving, paperwork, and labor can eat into what you actually take home. 💬 Comment below: Have you ever realized you were charging too little? How did you know, and did you raise your prices? In this Masters of Home Service episode, Gabe shares the hidden costs of taking on more jobs, how to test higher prices with new customers, and ways to explain an increase to longtime customers. Never miss an episode of Masters of Home Service. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
8 Year-End Financial Myths Costing Your Business Money
Attn: Jobber Community It's about that time to be thinking about year-end...and many home service business owners make the wrong move (or no move at all). Join me on October 22nd at 11am ET where I am collaborating with Jobber to discuss 8 Year-End Financial Myths that could be costing your business. Sign up today (link below). PS If you register and attend live, there's a chance to win a $50 gift card. See you there! https://www.getjobber.com/events/year-end-financial-tips/What is a good Business Credit Card to have for our line of work?
Hey Jobbers: I'm in the 7th month of business and things are going quite well, but I've been thinking of trying to get my purchases to work of me. Often times credit cards will give perks for cash back or rewards points depending on the purchases that one makes. In our line of work, purchases are pretty out of the norm to other business on a day-to-day basis. I've been doing some research of different programs, but the ranked lists seem to be sponsored by banks, like usual. Hard to trust biased articles. I was wondering if anyone had personal experience/ good recommendations for a credit card that is geared towards Home Services/Handyman companies. Thanks in advance, Think N Tinker
What's the best way to do job costing?
Hello everyone, I have been inconsistent with adding expenses to each job. How are other jobber users adding expenses to each job to see your profitability per job? Are you having your techs keep track of parts/fittings used on a separate form and then adding that to the job after the job has been completed? Trying to find an easy way to keep track of this and get it entered into jobber. Thanks Ernie
