Newly licensed trying to find fair pricing.

T

Tsull048

Member
Location
Boonton, NJ, USA
Occupation
Electrical Contractor
I just got my license a few months ago in New Jersey im starting to pick up some work now . Mostly I have done small service calls at 87 an hour with 110 service fee. I don't have many expenses so it's been pretty decent money.
I need to give a price to install a 30 amp portable generator inlet which will only be about 8 feet from the panel. Also I will be extending a 40 amp circuit about 6 feet. I'm figuring a day and 200 max in material. I talked to a few people in the trades and most agreed somewhere from 1500 to 2000 is reasonable. That would come to a minimum of 120 per hour about. I was suggested to just give a lump sum price and not break it down. I have no problem charging something like that as long as it's a fair price and I don't have too much experience pricing stuff for myself . Does that sound like a fair price?
 
For things like that with few possibilities for "gotcha"s, I thing fixed-price is the way to go, and what's a "fair price"? Should be something that isn't exorbitant for the work but earns you a nice profit.

The biggest mistake people make in pricing is they forget to include the invisible costs, like admin/sales/accounting/truck maintenance/socking something away to have time off/etc. Lots of threads here about that stuff.

Also, read some of the threads about giving free estimates.
 
I know of a Mechanical Contractor (I'm sure there are many) that charge a dispatch fee just to get to your home, for service calls and then the hourly rate starts.
 
Dispatch fee or a higher first-hour fee, the charge probable comes out the same. I wouldn't do that for planned/scheduled work - just give the customer an estimate or a fixed price.

Oh, and don't forget to list out the things that you're not responsible for, like patching and painting (unless you bill electrician's rates for those and can do good work).
 
Thanks for the responses it seems like it's kind of like playing blackjack how close can you get to 21 without getting over. I decided to modify my billing to service charge and then fixed price like suggested. I found I can make much more money without any complaints with fixed price. Again thanks for the responses.
 
Imo, you should charge as much as you can as long as you can make a good living doing so. I think contractors think there is some magic number that is "fair" and they search for that number. I am of the opinion that there is no such thing as fair. For the most part the right price is one where you get enough work but are not overwhelmed.

If you start to run short of work maybe you should think of lowering your prices. If you find yourself routinely working weekends and ten or twelve hours days you need to raise your prices a bit.

It seems to me that this type of work is more often driven by customer desire to get it done expeditiously rather than cheaply. If you are swamped for the next month you will likely lose out on stuff just because customers want the thing done.
 
petersonra said:
I am of the opinion that there is no such thing as fair.
Click to expand...
I am likewise of the opinion that fairness is a virtual impossibility.

A "fair" price for us looks like highway robbery to 99% of customers because they don't know a single thing about what an electrical installation actually entails and a fair price for them is utter BS for us.

In a "fair" world there'd just be like a giant government registry that people could go to for trade work and it would be distributed fairly and reasonably priced and we wouldn't have to play the stupid game of making up higher and higher numbers because if we didn't we'd all starve.
 
I can't tell you what to charge or what is fair. What is fair is like asking is this a nice painting.
Charge what you need to survive, put food on the table, charge for vacation, retirement, your salary, office, auto expense, phone expense.......

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Most important, you need to figure out your overhead number. That's not easy to do until you get a year behind you and you can go through your accounting to come up with a good number.
 
Tsull048 said:
I just got my license a few months ago in New Jersey im starting to pick up some work now . Mostly I have done small service calls at 87 an hour with 110 service fee. I don't have many expenses so it's been pretty decent money.
I need to give a price to install a 30 amp portable generator inlet which will only be about 8 feet from the panel. Also I will be extending a 40 amp circuit about 6 feet. I'm figuring a day and 200 max in material. I talked to a few people in the trades and most agreed somewhere from 1500 to 2000 is reasonable. That would come to a minimum of 120 per hour about. I was suggested to just give a lump sum price and not break it down. I have no problem charging something like that as long as it's a fair price and I don't have too much experience pricing stuff for myself . Does that sound like a fair price?
Click to expand...
Hey I just passed my NJ electrical exam, how long did it take for them to get back to you after passing the exam?
 
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