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What factors do you use to price job
Hi all.
We all have our own methods for pricing jobs but im guessing they are pretty similar. Spreadsheet, lists of headings (vinyl, manufacture hours, fitting etc etc) and you pump in your hour numbers or material meterage.Now ive been getting more established (3yrs old in new country) and work has been very busy the last few months. One of these reasons is my pricing, im not stupid cheap but below average which i needed to do to get my foot in the door. I would say i get 9/10 of jobs that i quote and more importantly customers have been very happy with the service and quality.
Example is that most of my vans that i do fit in the 190-280 pound range.
Now when i quote my hours im always tight, i know how long things take and generally price with 10mins in production and fitting. 1-1.5hours for manufacture and same for fitting most vans.
So as i said before i babbled on :sleep: im looking to up my prices. Now as a structure do i just need to allow more time or are there certain things that i havnt got in my quoting that should be considered.
Example of a van-
Vinyl meterage
Artwork time
Manufacture time
Fitting time.Ive been thinking should there be some sort of admin fee or something similar to cover emails, phone calls, invoicing.
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6 Replies
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Its all very well to price to the nearest ten minutes, but it all falls apart when something goes wrong, (which in my case is quite a high percentage of jobs). Somehow those mistakes have to be costed in to your quote. Mistake time, +20%
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You need to work out your operating costs, ie. overheads, include bills, rent, lighting, insurances, etc etc, staff / your wages and so on. then divide that by your working week, I divide it by 25hrs as, while I’m here much longer, a lot of time is spent following up on jobs, site visits, customer phone and emails enquiries and so on, you can’t be productive for a solid 8hrs a day. I then double the actual cost and there is my hourly rate.
Materials I mark up quite heavily, I generally use higher end cad films and the mark-up is generally x10 (not %), this includes working time with the film (cutting & weeding) & tape. Unless it’s very labour intensive I don’t charge additional labour at this point.
Hours are estimated at the beginning.. I charge for design time, consultation if it’s being a drawn out process, and any site visit if not local.
I then estimate separately for prep & installation time.. cleaning, applying, etc.
I always round up to the next 1/2hr on the actual job, the quote is always slightly over-estimated, I generally tell the customer that this would be the upper limit and, if all goes well, the job will likely be cheaper,It’s hard to tell you what you should be charging but our average vehicles (transit custom / vivaro size) is £300-500, We’re actually looking at increasing our hourly rate but are i the process of employing someone part time, She’s already taking on jobs and all but sealing the deal, while my costs will rise, I’ll also make more profit from her hours charged as labour, so I may not need to increase my own rate.
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Great info guys, thanks for the replies. As i can see there a few more things to consider when pricing. I think the main thing i can take from this is to add some air in the price and dont work like a maniac to get it done in the quoted schedule.
I also have my wife working with me. I would call it part time as she does emails and takes orders mostly which i dont consider into my pricing. When i need an exra pair of hands on site i charge her out at a very reasonable price (just read that back sounds a bit wrong 🙂 working i mean no extras).
I will take on your points a relook at it.thanks
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Pricing is quite fluid, if you’re stacked out, mad busy, winning every job, you are most probably too cheap.
Increase prices, until your workload is manageable, less work for more money is a winner.
When you are quieter, you can afford to lower prices.
There’s also the perceived value by the customer, and some customers have different priorities, not all are focused on price, but by competing on price can you provide the service & quality the less price conscious customers expect?
It all revolves around your costs, and what you are happy to make.
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Hugh, just looking at the way you work out your costs, just so I get this right as I am currently in the process of looking at mine…
Let’s say my rent, bills and overheads work out at £1000 a month which equates to £250 a week to keep things simple.
£250 / 25hrs = £10 an hour
You then double this so your hourly rate would be: £20 an hour?In regards to material, you markup the vinyl by 10, so 1m of material costing £5 works out at £50 a metre?
You mention you don’t charge additional labour at this point unless its labour intensive, what would you class as labour intensive? Serif fonts, text under a certain size, detailed images cut out of vinyl?
How would you work out the cost of that?
In regards to jobs that require overlays, how would you work out the vinyl costs then, does the same apply as you would a single colour?
Sorry for all the questions, I do ok at winning business but sometimes I feel I’ve just plucked a figure out of the air and If I don’t write it down after quoting a client, I’m stuffed (Which I have done a few times)
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Hi Daniel,
I’ll email you, don’t want to give everything away on a public area. .
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