Material Or Labor?

Dan_Watson

I know there have been hundreds of threads referring to labor costs, and I have read all of them, so I wont be asking again. What I am wondering is how is caulk, nails, screws, blades, ...etc. accounted for? Is that factored into your labor cost, or is that added to the material costs?

send_it_all

If you are doing general home remodeling, and occasionally have to bid a job that requires these items, I would say you should add it to material costs and mark it up just like you would all other materials....maybe more since they are cheap (sliding scale).

If all you do is moldings, and you have to keep the stuff in stock all the time, I can see an argument for calling it overhead. Either way it gets charged to the customer.

The way I do my proposals, it wouldn't really matter how I figured these items, as long as they don't get left out. I do a broken down estimate for my records, but when I give a proposal to the customer, all that is on it is a detailed scope of work and one bottom line price.

If you are doing ultra detailed job-costing, I would say to call these items materials.