Those who charge for inspections, do you have a flat rate or does it depend on the porperty?
I recently got a request for a rodent assessment for a house that is about 10,000 sqft, an absolute monster of a house with 6 levels, a 4 car garage (buddy has a McLaren 750S, Porsche 917, Ford GT and a Range Rover!!!), vehicle lifts, elevator, separate chef kitchen, indoor pool...the works! I told the homeowner my standard fee for a more modest sized house, and that I would have to triple that to be able to spend the time at their home and not feel rushed. They did agree and made no issue out of it but it did make me wonder how other people approach this. Then I found the issue areas and they were about 3-4 times as many as a regular house and the cost reflected that. More doors, vents, cracks, holes, utility lines...it was insane. Should I have kept the inspection charge the same knowing I would find many many more holes or was it smart to up the inspection charge?Are You Building a Business or Just Creating Yourself Another Job?
It’s easy as a small business owner to get caught up doing everything yourself. At what point do you start delegating, hiring, or putting systems in place so the business can operate without you being involved in every job? I’d love to hear how other owners are making that transition while still keeping quality and customer service high.What’s Your Target Gross Margin vs. Actual Net Margin? Let’s Benchmark.
In home services and contracting, top-line revenue gets all the attention, but net profit pays the bills. Many trade operators aim for a 40–50% gross profit margin to retain a healthy 15–20% net margin, but actual figures vary significantly based on team size and trade complexity. A standard healthy benchmark breakdown often looks like: Cost of Goods Sold (Direct Labor + Materials): 50–60% of revenue Overhead & Operating Expenses: 25–30% of revenue Net Profit Target: 15–20% of revenue I’d love to benchmark with the community: Are you hitting your target net margins consistently as you scale, or is overhead creeping up faster than revenue? Where are you seeing the biggest pressure on your margins today?Has anyone here been a Jobber Grant recipient? I’d love to learn from your experience.
Good morning, everyone! I recently completed my Jobber Grant application, and regardless of the outcome, I’m grateful for the opportunity and everything I’ve already learned through this community. I was curious if anyone here has been selected as a Jobber Grant recipient in previous years. If so, I’d love to hear about your experience. How did receiving the grant impact your business? What investments made the biggest difference? Were there any lessons you learned after receiving the funding that you wish you had known beforehand? I believe hearing real success stories can help all of us prepare for future growth, whether we’re selected this year or not. Thank you in advance for sharing your journey!How Understanding Gross Profit Changed My Business
For a long time, I thought I was doing everything right. Work was coming in, the crew stayed busy, and the revenue numbers looked solid. But every month I was stressed about money and I couldn't figure out why. It wasn't until I really sat down and looked at my numbers that things started to click. I came across Tom Reber's work, and it completely changed the way I thought about pricing. The biggest thing I took from it was understanding gross profit — not just revenue, not just what a job "feels like" it's worth, but what's actually left after you pay for labor and materials. Once I understood that number, I realized I had been leaving a lot of money on the table for years. What I Learned Gross profit is the money left from a job after you cover your direct costs — labor and materials. That number has to be healthy enough to cover everything else it takes to run your business: your truck, insurance, tools, software, your time. If your margin is too thin, all of that comes out of your pocket and you never get ahead. For me, setting a clear gross profit goal on every job was the turning point. It gave me something to price toward instead of just guessing and hoping it worked out. What Changed I stopped pricing jobs to win them and started pricing them to actually make money on them. Some bids I lost. But the ones I won started feeling worth it. Cash flow got easier. I could actually see where the money was going — and more importantly, where it was staying. It wasn't an overnight fix, but getting honest about my numbers was the first step to building a business that felt sustainable instead of just busy. If you've been in that same spot — working hard, staying booked, but still wondering where the money went — start by looking at your gross profit on every job. It might surprise you.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?
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!
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?
