How to Price a Job So You Actually Make Money (Not Just Stay Busy)

Most guys who are busy all year and still broke at the end of it have the same problem, and it's not that they don't work hard. They priced the work wrong. They covered their material, they paid their helper, they made a little on top, and they called that profit. It wasn't. They forgot to pay themselves a real wage and they forgot all the costs that don't show up on the invoice.

Here's how to price a job so the number on the quote actually leaves money in your pocket after everything's paid.

Start with your real costs, all of them

Before you can mark anything up, you have to know what the job actually costs you. Three buckets.

Materials. Easy one. What you'll spend at the supply house, plus a little for the stuff you always forget — fasteners, caulk, blades, the second trip. Add 5 to 10 percent on top of your material number for waste and the small things, because they always add up.

Labor. Not just your helper's pay. Your hours too, at a real rate. If you wouldn't get out of bed for less than a certain number per hour, that number goes in the quote whether you're swinging the hammer or not. A lot of owners price themselves at zero and wonder why they're tired and poor.

The stuff nobody puts on the invoice. This is the one that kills people. Fuel and truck wear getting to the job. Your insurance. Your phone. Tool replacement and repair. The hour you spent driving out to quote it and the evening you spent writing it up. Permits and dump fees. That's all real money and it comes out of this job whether you account for it or not.

Add those three together and you've got your actual cost. That number is the floor. Quote under it and you are literally paying the customer to let you work.

Then add profit on top — profit is not your wage

This is where most contractors get it wrong, so read it twice. Your labor rate pays you for the work. Profit is what's left over for the business after you've already been paid for your time. They are two different things.

If you roll your wage and your profit into one number, here's what happens: a slow month comes, you drop your price to win the job, and you think you're just taking a smaller profit. You're not. You're working for less than your own wage. The business has to make money on top of paying you, or it can't carry you through the slow stretch, buy the next tool, or survive one customer who doesn't pay.

A simple way to do it: figure your full cost like above, then add a profit margin on top. For a lot of small trade shops that lands somewhere around 15 to 35 percent over cost depending on the trade and the risk. Riskier work, specialized work, and anything with a warranty tail should carry more. Simple repeatable stuff can carry less. You'll find your number over a few jobs.

A dead-simple way to bid your next job

You don't need software for this. Grab paper.

• Materials, plus 10 percent for waste and the trip you'll forget.
• Labor hours times your real rate — include your own hours even if you're the one doing them.
• Overhead slice for this job: fuel, insurance, tools, the time to quote it. If you don't have a number yet, add 10 to 15 percent of your labor-plus-materials as a placeholder until you track it properly.
• Add it all up. That's your cost.
• Add your profit margin on top. That's your price.

Do that and your quote is built on something real instead of a gut feel and a hope. The gut-feel number is almost always too low, because the costs you can't see are the ones eating you.

Stop being the cheapest guy on purpose

There's always someone who'll do it cheaper. Let them. The contractor who lowballs to win every job is the one who's slammed all summer and can't make payroll in November. You are not trying to win every quote. You're trying to win the right ones at a price that pays you.

When you price for real profit you'll lose some jobs. That's the system working. The customer who only cares about the lowest number was going to be a headache anyway — chasing you for freebies, slow to pay, quick to complain. The ones who say yes at a fair price are the customers you actually want.

The other half of pricing: actually closing the quotes

Here's the part that ties a bow on all of it. You can price every job perfectly and still go broke if half your quotes go out and never come back. Pricing right only matters if the right jobs close.

And the quiet killer of a small shop isn't bad pricing — it's good quotes that died because nobody followed up. You send a solid number, the customer goes quiet for a week, you get pulled onto a job site, and that quote just evaporates. You write it off as "they went cheaper" when half the time they just got busy and forgot you. (We broke that down here: why customers go quiet after a quote and how to win them back.)

So price the job to make real money. Then chase every quote until you get a yes or a no. Those two habits together are most of the difference between a shop that's busy and broke and one that's busy and paid.

Let the follow-up run itself

Pricing the job is your skill. Remembering to chase thirty quotes a month is not a skill, it's a chore, and it's the first thing that falls off your plate when you're on a roof.

That's the exact gap QuoteChaser closes. You send your quote and it runs the polite day-2 / 7 / 14 / 30 follow-ups by text and email automatically, in your voice. When a customer replies yes, it pings your phone so you can lock the job at the price you actually need. When they say stop, it stops. You never chase anyone by hand again, and you stop writing off real jobs you already priced right.

It's built for one-to-ten-person shops — the people who don't have an office manager doing this for them.

See how it works → or join the waitlist and be first in when we open spots.

Price for profit, not just to stay busy. Then follow up on every single quote. That's the whole game.