How do you work out your pricing of jobs??

[Lynn Normington]

Can’t get a grip on "normal " Sorry

Lynn

[chrisfoster]

sorry having re-read it i cant either!!! I meant to say signwriters in general!

Chris

[Adrian Hewson]

You really have to work out your overheads. If you work form home garage, garden shed, garden, bedroom etc forget that and pretend you pay rent and rates.

Add you rent rates, phone electricity and all your other costs (except materials for the Job) but include any machinery that you use to work with (leases etc), remember also insurances , financial services and your holidays and divide them by 250 (you only work a max of 250 days a year) and they are your daily overhead rates divide these by 8 and they are your hourly overhead rates.

Add to this the material costs (double them for cock ups) and labour rate (remember NI and pensions) and then add profit, if you like the profit you are doing well !!!!!!!!

Regards Adrian

[Jill Marie Welsh]

Chris,
I use both the Signwriter’s Pricing Guide
http://www.signwritersusa.com/index1.html
and the free gudie that comes in SignCraft magazine.
http://www.signcraft.com/
Others also use Estimate softwear, which lets you punch in your own costs and hourly rate etc.
http://www.pricingmadeeasy.com/
You can download a free trial of the program.
Always remember to factor in your talent…can others offer your services?
And of course your overhead, etc.
I always used to use materials X three, but that isn’t always the best way.
Love….Jill

[David Rogers]

Simple rule of thumb is: get just under what somebody is prepared to pay for it without screwing yourself!.

A set of vinyl ‘taxi letters’ might cost you 10p in materials & 50p in labour – but you can get £6 for them. However, getting a 10x markup wont apply everywhere.

eg. an 8×4 – 5mm foam board with vinyl – It could be £90, it could be £250 depending on the work involved & end user. A building site safety board cannot command as much profit as a corporate event backdrop even though they might have the same work & materials consumed. Price to YOUR advantage, and by that I mean FUTURE advantage. I’ve had dozens of recommendations simply based on a ‘good job for a fair price’ – they send their mates in, then you get their next van, the shop front….. I don’t sell cheap – I sell value & perceived ‘free’ extras. eg. If you’ve just tiled up a cut job for cutting & there’s some extra space – throw in something for them – it’ll just go in the bin otherwise – say an extra set of phone numbers when you’ve done a van. Costs you NOTHING – makes client feel they won.

And never, ever haggle and be conned out of your skills. Let your first price be your final price. Sure, let them then strike a deal for say 5 signs at £500. But when they just order 2 – it’s not the £200 they suggest, it’s the £225 you need. The reason they came back is because they want YOU to make their stuff, price has now become secondary to an extent.

Best advice I can give is as above – know your overheads (before materials costs), factor in materials job by job (plus a bit) and work out either an hourly, daily or weekly target per capita – this has to include tea drinking & downtime / chatting to customers / logging on to UKSB!

Dave

[Hugh Potter]

i only use 610 vinyl, and when i started, i doubled the cost of the vinyl (inc vat – and delivery if non stock colour) added x amount for labour to design, make, and fit, it was all so complicated !

i now multiply the vinyl cost by 10 (inc vat) and that covers all my time etc for small jobs, bigger jobs might want ‘twaking one way or the other, so for something on a van, say 2m per side, in two colours, total of 8 metres of vinyl, it would work out roughly £100 for vinyl that costs around £1.25 a metre, if it seems too cheap, add a bit, if it seems too dear, knock a bit of by way of an ‘introductory discount’ !

obviously you’ll have to use your instinct, if i use a material that costs me £5 a metre, then i cant realistically charge £50 a mtr, so then i’d probably half my mark-up, if a job takes twice as long to apply than an easy one, then again, add some on to the price to cover,

the trouble with any system, is that there are so many variables, ie materials, labour time, travel, customers budget etc,

i usually find the best way to approach a customer that is unsure, is to offer three rough designs, when they choose one, i then offer a few different prices, based on different materials etc, make the prices range from your lowest bid for something simple, to a high one, i usually find they dont wanna be cheap and go with the cheapest, and dont wanna pay for the flash expensive one, but the better designed middle one is ‘just right’ !!

i guess i may be making more work for myself in my methods, but i often find that my way results in me being told that my price was similar to joe bloggs, but they preferred my flexibility, like yourself, i dont go out of my way to undercut anyone, there’s no real point to that, you’ll just end up with the crap cheap jobs that way, and not be very much respected by other sign makers in your area !

good luck !

[chrisfoster]

excellent thanks very much for all your replies. I’m happy to see im on the right track!

Cheers
Chris 🙂

[Ian Higgins]

Hi,

I use estimate… took a while to load all the variables into but I now use it for everything.. Sometimes I think things are too expensive and other times too cheap… but whatever it comes up with is what i charge..
Cheers
Ian