What to charge on small jobs

S

smajchrzak

Member
Location
Rochester Ny
Occupation
Electrician
Hello everyone,
I'm a licensed electrician out of rochester ny. I'm owner and sole operator and my business is about 2 years old.

Im struggling to figure out what to charge for small/quick jobs. My hourly is $90 and I have a $160 minimum. My main problem comes from troubleshooting jobs that I finish quickly. As my skill improves and I get better with my tracing equipment I have found myself fixing issues quicker. For example, today I went to a customers house who lost power in two bathrooms and a bedroom. I found which breaker supplied these areas and threw my tracer on it and found a receptacle in the hallway had the home run and the neutral fell out of the receptacle (yes it was back stabbed). After replacing the receptacle and testing everything i was done in about 35 min. So the bill was $175 before tax.
I know thats a good rate for 35 min of work but I just feel like bringing power back to all those rooms is worth more than $175. Id appreciate any input! Thanks in advance!
 
There is no correct answer to this question. There are many variables. One is what your area will support. In my area, plumbers can charge enough to retire off one job, and customers will just say “Oh OK hehe” and pay it, but if I charge $250 to drive 1 1/2 hours to trouble shoot their issue, they think I’m ripping them off

I suggest to them that they lick their fat finger and stick it in the breaker panel and figure it out from there. 😳😂🙄

A great deal will depend on your overhead, and your work load. If you can stack 4-5 of those jobs a day and your overhead is $20K/ year, you might be doing alright. I personally have trouble making decent money on service work because I have so many larger jobs going, and for me, a service call disrupts a day. But if I had 20/week it’d be great

I assume you know your own numbers in and out, and just want to see how far you can push it. I would say, raise prices incrementally until things slow to where you don’t want it, and drop back a little and hold right there.

I know some guys here do a ton of service work and probably have way better info than me. I think @James L is one of those.
 
All my jobs are like five minutes from each other and I just do an hour charge. I have up my hourly rate though, but if it takes me 20 minutes or an hour, it’s my hourly rate.
I do feel bad for the elderly and widows and give them breaks
I feel I’m doing good for myself
had a lady today I’m gonna charge a 150 for moving. The light took me like 20 minutes. I said 100 bucks. He was happy and I was happy.
 
I charge $125 trip charge and $105 per hour, with a 1-hour minimum. So the minimum for me is $230.00

I have a friend who charges $100 trip and $135 per hour, with a 2-hour minimum. So his minimum is $370.00.....he started that because of Angie's List, where he was able to offer a "coupon" for $275 for two hours. And then I told him I charge a trip charge, so he added that.

One good thing is that those prices are paying enough that you have options. You can charge the full rate, or you can take off the trip charge if it's really quick and you feel like planting a seed.

Here's probably the #1 takeaway from all my service work - there's 2,080 normal work hours in a year, but you're only going to have 1,200 or so billable hours (not counting trip charges). So however much money you need in a year, divide by 1200 and that's your minimum hourly rate
 
James L said:
Here's probably the #1 takeaway from all my service work - there's 2,080 normal work hours in a year, but you're only going to have 1,200 or so billable hours (not counting trip charges). So however much money you need in a year, divide by 1200 and that's your minimum hourly rate
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That is a 60% billable efficiency. I’ve always seen it said that electrical service work is 50% billable efficiency. But in my own experience, it’s less. Especially for the people who do only smaller jobs and service calls, people who very rarely get a full day or multi day job.

Are you able to get 1200 billable hours a year with only working 40 hours a week? Is that counting all the office time and other time that you spend working such as answering emails and phone calls throughout the evening, sitting down on the couch and pulling out the phone and doing an hour worth of looking up the installation of something or finding the best price for material or all the other work that we do?

I think a lot of people who do residential service work have a billable efficiency of 35-40% and just don’t realize it. They need to raise their prices to cover the unbillable time. I think the OP is one of those people, I work in a very similar cost of living area and I was charging more than $90 per hour 15 years ago when I first went into business.
 
ptonsparky said:
I charged $75 to plug in item that had no power. Probably a bit over an hour to get there & back. They paid but were not happy.

I should have been doing the trip charge plus hour minimum, at least. Hindsight.
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I always try to spend a few minutes on the phone with my customers when they have an issue. I walk them through turning all the breakers off and then back on, I tell them to walk around the house looking for GFCI outlets that could be reset, etc. I always tell them that I like to have the customer try these things themselves because I have to charge the service call fee if I give them that block of time and come out to their home, even if it’s something quick.

This has always curbed their aggravation.
 
JohnHess said:
That is a 60% billable efficiency. I’ve always seen it said that electrical service work is 50% billable efficiency. But in my own experience, it’s less. Especially for the people who do only smaller jobs and service calls, people who very rarely get a full day or multi day job.

Are you able to get 1200 billable hours a year with only working 40 hours a week? Is that counting all the office time and other time that you spend working such as answering emails and phone calls throughout the evening, sitting down on the couch and pulling out the phone and doing an hour worth of looking up the installation of something or finding the best price for material or all the other work that we do?

I think a lot of people who do residential service work have a billable efficiency of 35-40% and just don’t realize it. They need to raise their prices to cover the unbillable time. I think the OP is one of those people, I work in a very similar cost of living area and I was charging more than $90 per hour 15 years ago when I first went into business.
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I usually don't spend a lot of time looking for the best price. The customer is paying for the materials that I buy. But even then, time spent on materials should be covered by the markup you charge for materials. There shouldn't be a blending of material money and labor money.

And if I have to spend time learning how to install something, that's done on the job. That's billable time.

I went to install a ceiling fan one time that was something like 8 ft. In diameter, and it had literally 120 parts. The instructions said to go online and watch a 45-minute video on how to put that thing together. Guess who paid for that time
 
JohnHess said:
I always try to spend a few minutes on the phone with my customers when they have an issue. I walk them through turning all the breakers off and then back on, I tell them to walk around the house looking for GFCI outlets that could be reset, etc. I always tell them that I like to have the customer try these things themselves because I have to charge the service call fee if I give them that block of time and come out to their home, even if it’s something quick.

This has always curbed their aggravation.
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Honest to gosh, he was sure they had a problem with the UF cable to the Fencer receptacle. It would not have been unusual for this farm. I went prepared to do a locate. The wallwart was in the device...the other end was hanging in some weeds just below the equipment. He was unhappy with his son, himself and the bill. He was not a neophyte.
 
James L said:
I usually don't spend a lot of time looking for the best price. The customer is paying for the materials that I buy. But even then, time spent on materials should be covered by the markup you charge for materials. There shouldn't be a blending of material money and labor money.
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I’m just talking about time spent working for the business. Recently I needed a load shedding module for a job. I’ve never installed one before, so I took some time to find the different options that are available and where I could find one for a reasonable price. That was 20 minutes of time spent on my business. While I was doing it in a comfortable chair, I was still working for my business. That’s my entire point, most one-man shops aren’t working 40 hour weeks.
 
JohnHess said:
doing it in a comfortable chair, I was still working for my business.
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Roger that for paperwork.

My state requires preparing contract with license board complaint phone numbers, estimate with NTE guarantee, and invoice/receipts.

He who refuses to comply risks refund, fines, license suspension, and working for free.
 
ptonsparky said:
I charged $75 to plug in item that had no power. Probably a bit over an hour to get there & back. They paid but were not happy.

I should have been doing the trip charge plus hour minimum, at least. Hindsight.
Click to expand...
I recently went to see what was wrong with an electric range, and it was a tripped breaker. The guy was kicking himself because he thought his old range was bad so he bought a brand new one. That was an expensive tripped breaker. I felt bad and charged him $90
 
smajchrzak said:
Hello everyone,
I'm a licensed electrician out of rochester ny. I'm owner and sole operator and my business is about 2 years old.

Im struggling to figure out what to charge for small/quick jobs. My hourly is $90 and I have a $160 minimum. My main problem comes from troubleshooting jobs that I finish quickly. As my skill improves and I get better with my tracing equipment I have found myself fixing issues quicker. For example, today I went to a customers house who lost power in two bathrooms and a bedroom. I found which breaker supplied these areas and threw my tracer on it and found a receptacle in the hallway had the home run and the neutral fell out of the receptacle (yes it was back stabbed). After replacing the receptacle and testing everything i was done in about 35 min. So the bill was $175 before tax.
I know thats a good rate for 35 min of work but I just feel like bringing power back to all those rooms is worth more than $175. Id appreciate any input! Thanks in advance!
Click to expand...
I'm retired and pricing can be a challenge. I just had a company come out to repair my central AC. They charge a $95 show up fee and a minimum of one hour @$155. No matter what you charge some customers will complain of price you charge. You have a lot of money invested in tools, work vehicle , PPE, insurance, etc so don't feel bad when a troubleshooting & necessary repair only takes a short time. Had customers that asked if we could not show up at their house until after 10 AM for a couple of days of work because they slept late. Told them okay but our hours are 8 AM to 4:30 PM and would have to charge them 8 hours if we are only allowed to work 6 hours in their home.. Same with some commercial work that can only be done late at night or on holidays.
 
JohnHess said:
I’m just talking about time spent working for the business. Recently I needed a load shedding module for a job. I’ve never installed one before, so I took some time to find the different options that are available and where I could find one for a reasonable price. That was 20 minutes of time spent on my business. While I was doing it in a comfortable chair, I was still working for my business. That’s my entire point, most one-man shops aren’t working 40 hour weeks.
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Correct, nobody's only putting in a 40-hour week. But I think it's a mistake to conflate different types of time as if they mean the same.

The best way to think about chopping up the money is if you never did any work. If you were only the money man, and you hired other people to do every bit of the work including the office work, etc. then you'll get a better idea of where all the money goes and how it needs to be divvied up

Imagine if you hired an employee. You're going to pay him for 2,080 hours. What you pay him needs to come out of the billable time that you charge to the customer, and what you pay him should probably not exceed about half of your billable time.

The other half of that time goes into all of the backdrop effort and expenses, profit, etc.

So anytime you spend getting business licenses, continuing education, vehicle repairs, etc would be the job of somebody other than the electrician who's on site

It's no different if you are the employee and the one doing all the administrative work. Half of what you charge is for your labor on the job site, and the other half of what you charge is all of the other expenses, including any additional time you might tie up with other things which make the business run.

Material markup should cover any time spent buying materials, any kind of warranty work, additional profit, etc
 
James L said:
I recently went to see what was wrong with an electric range, and it was a tripped breaker. The guy was kicking himself because he thought his old range was bad so he bought a brand new one. That was an expensive tripped breaker. I felt bad and charged him $90
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I bought a new Fluke 87 because I thought it had gone toes up. A couple hours later I noticed the low battery symbol. Turns out I needed to have two.🙄
 
ptonsparky said:
I bought a new Fluke 87 because I thought it had gone toes up. A couple hours later I noticed the low battery symbol. Turns out I needed to have two.🙄
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I lost my Fluke toner. I used it a lot so I bought another one. A few months later I was looking for something in my van and looked under me seat. Guess what I found under there? Yep, my Toner!
So guess I needed two of those!
 
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