Haha.......you can work 24/7 if you want
But that's nonsense to me......lol I guess averaging 5.5 or 6.5 hours is probably in truth pretty good. Any more than that is just luck of the draw. Today, we billed out 7.5 and my helper cost me 8.5 so I guess that was good day
Helpers often make service work expensive - especially for residential service work, as it is often really only a 1 man job. You either pass the cost of the unnecessary help on directly to the customer, which they generally will not like, or you eat that cost and pass it on indirectly with the rest of your overhead costs.
I just think all of us want a fair and honest living working hard......So the second part of my question was, do you start a job in the mid, to late afternoon knowing you cant finish it that day?, or do you wait until the next day? Leaving a customer without power is a obvious no, but I was curious how everyone handles those situations.......
I start jobs all the time knowing they will not be finished the same day, but kind of have to factor in other information of each job before even starting them. I do have a battlefield of unfinished projects though which gets tough to manage at times, both for myself and the customers. When you are a small show it is hard to be everywhere at once, then in a few months you sometimes wonder what you will be doing next.
there isn't..... we are operating without a frunk slammer.... 3 months, 2,000 posts..... batshit crazy.
there is ample participation over on the other side of the internet.... :happyyes:
Join Date08-31-2013
Total Posts2,090
however..... as far as billable hours, your best bet is to move towards flat rate pricing.
let's see... you want a 30 amp 480 volt disconnect on the wall, feeding a compressor.... ummm.... $1,310.
material was $388... so $900 or so for the work..... took all of three and a half hours.....
did i get 8 billable hours? dunno. do i care? no.
Today's society seems to prefer bullying one another, I say let them go elsewhere if that is what they want.
as far as caring if you got 8 billable hours? if you find you took only 3.5 hours then you may start to expect to be able to do that same task twice in a day but that may be a little unrealistic to do consistently. Your time is still a factor in business operations just not directly stated on the invoice in flat rate pricing.
How do you folks flat rate troubleshooting calls?
Good question and has been up to debate before on here. I honestly don't see how you can do any such thing without at least a minimum service charge to start investigating the problem and then go from there depending on what was found. If you already spent significant time trying to find the problem and still haven't found it, that puts you in a hard position with some customers. This maybe doesn't happen with some customers like residential work. If you can't find a problem you may go to other options and eliminate the original wiring or something like that, but for some commercial or industrial customers it is not always that simple, but experience sometimes makes it go easier in those jobs.
Who said I didn't know what my operating cost is? haha Our rates are balanced with our calculated operating cost, the market, and what we think is fair and equitable. We live in society today where the consumer is much smarter about the price of goods and services. I'm not going to double or triple my rates to anyone. You guys have a great day, and a Merry Christmas, and I appreciate your willingness to try and help me.....
I don't know that the consumer is necessarily smarter about the price of goods and services, the competition just got tougher. They have the ability to find out what it may cost elsewhere much easier than they used to and will use that against you to beat you down in price. They also don't always realize what they may not be getting from that lower price elsewhere that they may be getting from you, but the price tag is what wins most of the time.
I have come to the realization that if a customer doesn't like my price, I probably do not want them as a customer either. Let someone else do the job and we are both happy. Then they often call me sometime down the road when they have problems and they can't get along with "the other guy", or something along those lines.