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
 
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