t&m OR Bid

[bikeindy]

It sounds like the typical property manager, looking for a guy green eniough to fall for the city is beating him up, not the city finally caught the electrical work I had done by my $8 an hour master electrician who worked with the cheap material I supplied, now all you have to do is fix 20K worth of work for $2K and he can give you a lot of work, you will be my electrician, I wonder where I heard that before?
Just make up the loss, on the volume of work, it's simple the more units he has, the more money you can loose.

Yes, so true.

I got a call last week, the woman is selling a house she "rehabbed" I remember this house 'cuz I bid the electrical. turns out the home inspector found a few problems with the electrical. She doesn't think it will be too bad for me to take care of and needs a ball park quote. she reads the list of items I tell her $600 - $700 she said do the work. Well as I begin to do the work I find more wrong than the inspector and I fix it all. I charged her $900.46 I explained that if she had me do the work to begin with instead of some hack the problems would not have been there, and if there was an issue on the inspection I would have done the fixes for free. She assured me that next time I will be doing the work. Don't count on it! But I made good money for 4 hours work and $60 in materials.

 

[bradleyelectric]

Yes, so true.

I got a call last week, the woman is selling a house she "rehabbed" I remember this house 'cuz I bid the electrical. turns out the home inspector found a few problems with the electrical. She doesn't think it will be too bad for me to take care of and needs a ball park quote. she reads the list of items I tell her $600 - $700 she said do the work. Well as I begin to do the work I find more wrong than the inspector and I fix it all. I charged her $900.46 I explained that if she had me do the work to begin with instead of some hack the problems would not have been there, and if there was an issue on the inspection I would have done the fixes for free. She assured me that next time I will be doing the work. Don't count on it! But I made good money for 4 hours work and $60 in materials.

gasp!! Did she agree to over $200. hr before you started??

 

[bikeindy]

gasp!! Did she agree to over $200. hr before you started??

I didn't tell her how long it would take I don't charge T&M I charge by the task. why are you gasping? All I did was make the other guys profit on the job had he charged correctly and done the work to code. Others on here hate Hacks, I love them they keep me working.

 

[MBLES]

I have a customer that own a apartment complex who just got hammered by
the city. He would like to get a bid for Hourly he will provide material or bid.
He got hammered on a/c units no disconnect and loose conduit on roofs.
I havent seen the work yet i will go there on monday. Any advise on how I
can bid job. He has 530 units all got hit with missing or misinstalled disconnects. I was thinking about charging him per disconnects and only
wire from load side to a/c unit. Any wire on line side extra to panel.

Thanks guys I think I can gather enough info to propose a good price.
I believe i can do it cheap and still make money but i wont know until i
see the work involved.

 

[emahler]

Thanks guys I think I can gather enough info to propose a good price.
I believe i can do it cheap and still make money but i wont know until i
see the work involved.

your 1st sentence is obviously a lie...had you learned anything here, you would have never typed the 2nd sentence...

 

[bikeindy]

your 1st sentence is obviously a lie...had you learned anything here, you would have never typed the 2nd sentence...

Some people think making a wage when you're in business is making money. They have more to learn.

 

[bikeindy]

Thanks guys I think I can gather enough info to propose a good price.
I believe i can do it cheap and still make money but i wont know until i
see the work involved.

Here is something else to gather, This guy has a mess, he paid for the mess to be installed, now he is asking you to fix it. He knows he has to pay big so let him know how big that is going to be. Take the word cheap out of your vocabulary. He got cheap work the first time, now he needs to pay for Quality work.

 

[MBLES]

Thanks guys I think I can gather enough info to propose a good price.
I believe i can do it cheap and still make money but i wont know until i
see the work involved.

Maybe the word cheap was not the correct work to use I believe I can
turn a profit. I know these type of owners/management most service
electrician deal with these yahoos Most contractors wouldnt touch this
job BUt I believe i can turn a profit only if they accept my bid. IF they
dont HAVE A good day! Thats the only advise I was looking for the most part
I got it.

 

[growler]

When a job this size gets a bid price, it may look like a lot of money, but T&M will only fool both you, and the customer into thinking it will not cost that much.

I believe i can do it cheap and still make money but i wont know until i
see the work involved.

MBLES I think you will get screwed on this job if you are not carefull. satcom is right, with 530 units to do, any unit price multiplied by 530 is going to come out to a pretty good chunk of change. It's going to look really large but it's going to be the correct amount.

Figure out what the cost would be to do one unit and then multiply by 530 and see what type of number you come up with. When you come up with a pr unit price make sure to clearly limit the scope of work done to each unit. Any one item done 530 times gets expensive so don't miss anything.

Make sure that nothing is just verbal and that the contract covers everything to include pay schedule and penalty for late payments.

Don't get blinded by dollar signs, the amount may look large but that can disappear quicky if you make any mistakes or don't cover yourself. Don't rush into a major contract, make sure all I's are dotted and all T's are crossed and nothing is left to chance.

 

[MBLES]

MBLES I think you will get screwed on this job if you are not carefull. satcom is right, with 530 units to do, any unit price multiplied by 530 is going to come out to a pretty good chunk of change. It's going to look really large but it's going to be the correct amount.

Figure out what the cost would be to do one unit and then multiply by 530 and see what type of number you come up with. When you come up with a pr unit price make sure to clearly limit the scope of work done to each unit. Any one item done 530 times gets expensive so don't miss anything.

Make sure that nothing is just verbal and that the contract covers everything to include pay schedule and penalty for late payments.

Don't get blinded by dollar signs, the amount may look large but that can disappear quicky if you make any mistakes or don't cover yourself. Don't rush into a major contract, make sure all I's are dotted and all T's are crossed and nothing is left to chance.

I will work with customer and do what they
can afford I dont think they will want all units done this year. I did a large
business park few years ago grounding ALL RTU It lasted 1 yr. Did one BUilding at a time. Thanks for advise

 

[CopperTone]

this sounds like T only and no M. which is fine - be sure you jack your hourly rate to make up for lack of M (your material cost plus mark up)

I think what most people here are saying is " charge accordingly to make a profit not just a paycheck" be sure you are covering all your overhead, direct costs, paying yourself, and profit)

if you pay a guy to work for you $25/hr - you probably should be billing him out at around $70 -$80 depending on your costs . (more than that if your market can bear that)
Most property managers I've met are flat out cheap - its not that they don't have the money - you should see what they are charging - they make a living out of being cheap and hiring the cheapest guy around.

I doubt you will get this job if you price it properly.
When I started to listen to the pricing chatter on this forum I raised and held my prices - started to lose some work but the work we do is much more profitable and I am much happier then before because of it.

 

[hot wire]

all ways had problems doing t&m .I guess they thank your ripping them off.How do you show recipts you dont mark up your material.What do you do if you run into unseen problems..

 

[jaylectricity]

The problem with time is that customers think of it as labor. So they expect to look at your invoice and see how much they're paying for the materials and how much they're paying for the labor. Then they think you're making however much per hour based on that.

What I do is I will put down how much the materials are (with markup) and then I'll put the total amount. Haven't had any problems with that.

I did a job hanging some commercial outside sign lighting for a good customer. I did one side of the building one year and bought the lights for about $450 each straight from the distributor. I used his company credit card to purchase the lights.

Then I did the other side last year. I gave him a price of about $5500, figuring $4000 for the lights and materials and two days with an experienced helper. Again I used his company credit card, but I ordered the lights through my supply house and got them for about $250 a piece. So when I went for my final check I knocked the price down to $4750, and subtracted the cost of the materials I charged to his card.

When I told him the balance, he paused and asked, "What was the labor on that?" I asked him what the problem was and he said it sounded kind of high. I said, "You agreed to $5500 and now you're paying almost $1000 less than that." He wrote the check with no problem. Still a great customer, I do work for his parents, as well as their family. Oh, and I gave my helper $600 for two six hour days of work.

 

[satcom]

The problem with time is that customers think of it as labor. So they expect to look at your invoice and see how much they're paying for the materials and how much they're paying for the labor. Then they think you're making however much per hour based on that.

I was just at one of our local auto repair shops, and a customer came in to pick up his car, when he was handed the bill, he asked the see the invoice, and insisted he was not paying until he did, well the lot filled up with police cars, and the customer ended up paying, and was told to never come back. you will meet these jerks, when your in business, you just have to move on.

 

[ceb58]

I was just at one of our local auto repair shops, and a customer came in to pick up his car, when he was handed the bill, he asked the see the invoice, and insisted he was not paying until he did, well the lot filled up with police cars, and the customer ended up paying, and was told to never come back. you will meet these jerks, when your in business, you just have to move on.

Reading over these post about customers wanting to see the invoice made me remember something from some years ago. I went to pick up some auto parts for a friend who ran a shop. I picked up the parts and the invoice with the price. When he gave the customer the bill he attached a copy of the parts invoice to the bill. After the customer paid and left I ask him did he not mark the parts up. He smiled and told me the parts house has it set up that the price on the ticket has his markup built into it. What he gets charged is 25% less than shown on the ticket. That way the customer doesn't get mad about a markup and he doesn't have to explain it to them. My accounts are set up as cash at the supply houses since most of my work is bid and not T&M. I get better pricing with cash and can make more on mark up than if it was on a charge account. I wonder if the supply house can set it up the same way. Add your markup in the price then if some one wants to see the invoice for material they see the price as you charged it and dont see the markup. Seems it would cause less headaches than trying to explain it to some pissy customer.

 

[Dnkldorf]

T&M


Labor week ending 11-10-09 $3200.00
Materials Week ending 11-10-09 $1500.00


Total due $4700.00





Most customers will not have a problem with T&M billing if they see you being productive at all times, and they get to see what you bought.