A job can be busy and still lose money. The usual culprit isn’t bad work — it’s a quote that covered the obvious costs and quietly skipped the rest. Here’s a simple way to price so the number you quote is a number you keep.
Start from cost, not gut feel
Before you think about what to charge, add up what the job actually costs you to deliver. That’s materials, the labor hours at what you really pay (including the time nobody bills — loading, driving, cleanup), plus a slice of the overhead that keeps your business running whether or not you’re on a job.
- Materials, with a little waste factor built in
- Labor hours × your true loaded labor rate
- Subcontractors, dump fees, permits, equipment
- A share of overhead: truck, insurance, phone, software, your own time quoting
Markup covers cost. Margin is what you keep.
These two get mixed up constantly, and it’s expensive. Marking up materials 20% does not give you a 20% profit margin. If your all-in cost on a job is $8,000 and you want to actually keep 30%, you don’t add 30% — you divide by 0.70 and quote about $11,430. The difference between “add 30%” and “keep 30%” is real money on every job.
Track cost against the quote — every job
The only way to price better next time is to know what happened this time. Log materials and labor against the job as you go, so you can see the real margin before the invoice goes out — not discover it at tax time. A few jobs of honest tracking will tell you exactly which kinds of work make you money and which quietly don’t.
Let’s Get Quoted tracks labor and materials against every job and shows the margin live, and its quotes are itemized so you can price from your real costs. But the discipline matters more than the tool: quote from cost, keep margin instead of adding markup, and check the number afterward.