Small Jobs

JALAPENO TOM

How do you charge for the following types of projects?

These are actual requests we get. I am asking because many of these tie up a guy for only part of a day. Sometimes there is not another job to send him to, either b/c we don't have one for that day or it doesn't make sense economically to send a guy to another job.

I had an Electrician over for 2 hours. It was $85 for showing up. After 1 hour the rate dropped to $60 plus materials. If a painter has a 2 hour job it doesn't make sense to charge $40 per hour only. He may not get a full 8 hr day and the company has sscheduling issues. How do you guys bill for these things? We are looking at something similar to what the Electrician did.

1. 3" diameter drywall repair. Patch and prepare for paint.

2. 6x6 Powder Room. 2 coat walls, 1 ceiling

3. Paint 2 coats on a newly installed double hung w/casing.

DecksEtc

Most Handyman service companies have say a 2 hour minimum - whether they are there for 5 min. or two hours. They would be your competition for the kind of jobs you described. You could do something like calculate total trip time, there and back, or add a "small job" premium to your estimates.

You are correct in that you need to do something to compensate for the time it takes to set-up and do these small jobs and also take into account you or you workers are lost for other jobs while doing the small ones.

I'm not a painter but a similar example for me was a job I got last year where they wanted 34 lin. ft. of fence. I charged my usual linear foot price for the fence plus a $500 "small job" premium. The job took two full days out of my schedule because day 1 was for setting 3 posts and day 2 was building the fence. Also, the wood order was large enough for delivery so I calculated my time to pick it up into the quote.

slickshift

Even if the project is only a few hours, with set-up/break-down/clean-up it shoots the morning or afternoon so I have 1/2 day rate that I figure jobs by

Same if it's really only a...say 5 or 6 hour project including su/bd/cu
It pretty much shoots the day
So that's the day rate

I don't tell customers "Oh that'll take me 2.5 hours so I'm charging you for 4", I just say "Oh that's ***" know that the morning/day will be pretty much shot

Paul Burns

[QUOTE=JALAPENO TOM]How do you charge for the following types of projects?QUOTE]


Tom, we get calls like that all the time too. For us, it is all about lead flow. Not just this problem, but lead flow means just about EVERYTHING to us.

For this particular problem, if it's the middle of winter and you haven't had a call in a week and live in a northern climate where you would rather NOT go out and drum up work, I would probably say that we have a two hundred dollar minimum. Or, if I didn't really need the money, just stick to our regular 1000.00 minimum.

For us, the 1000.00 minimum works pretty good. Sometimes when we tell people that, they will invent something, or at our suggestion, come up with something else for us to do. Either way it is a win-win-win.

You know, I say that win-win-win thing a lot and didn't even realize myself how much it helps to think like that until I had been saying and thinking like that for a couple of years. But here's the deal. If you think about win-win-win all of the time, it helps to make the correct decision about things. You know that the entities in win-win-win are; our company, our employees, and our clients or prospects. So if we are hesitent about a decision, one of the first tools I use is win-win-win. IOW's if we can work something out anchieve win-win-win, then it is PROBABLY a good idea or system. If any single one of the entities is put into a losing situation, then our solution PROBABLY is not a good one and we need to keep thinking.

And it works for one man bands also. And really, us one man'ers are usually on the losing end of things more than we should be. I mean I hate to think about all of the money that I lost back-in-the-day by giving away a door here, and an extra coat there, and....... I do believe in giving a little something for free, and do it by design to this day, but you know the kind of extra's that I'm talking about, right?

So think about the win-win-win and let me know if it works for you or if you've already got something better that will help me!

About as low as we will go these days is 500.00. But that has to be a cold winter day, or something like that. At 500.00, we have to have one person all day, or two people for 1/2 a day. Any less is just not worth it. So we lose, or our employee loses, and that ain't right!

The other thing that can be considered is setting people like that up for when you have a job in the neighborhood or when you get 2 of those 500.00 jobs that 2 people can do in a day. You just have to explain to the prospect that you don't know how long it will be, but you have a reminder pop-up everyday to team him/her up with another small job prospect. Then, if you get enough of those, you can start a handyman division that is supposedly a pretty darned good thing these days, and I bet it is.

Or, yu just dedicate 1 day a month for them. Say the third Thursday of every month. Most of us can probably fill that day for at least two employees and maybe a lot more. So the MOST the prospect would have to wait is 30 days. And you can adjust that to how many leads you are getting for that type of work. you might go to one day every 2 weeks, or 2 months, or,..........

I think that any of these 3 ways will accomplish the win-win-win, but I haven't thought them through, so..... watch-out!

Lead flow + win-win-win = DYNAMITE!

Anyway, I hope you find something that works and then let us all in on what works best.

Good luck,
Paul

bassmaster

I go along the lines with SLICKHIFT, 1/2 day rates. because it is only me, no employees.

__________________
A bad day on the water is better than a good day at work !

BASSMASTER

paintr56

I have a $400 minimum charge. I will for a very good customer that is willing to be flexible go below this on occasion but never lower then $250. When I explain my minimum I suggest doing additional work. Another small room or some exterior trim.

Jim Bunton