Maintenance jobs, billing the customer, profit on small invoices

3926 Views 11 Replies 11 Participants Last post by CBJenkins, Jul 4, 2014

waxavier

Discussion Starter · Jun 9, 2014

I'm starting to help my father in law with his small electrical business. I'm a project manager for an earthwork and site work contractor, so I am familiar with the industry. My question is regarding the smaller maintenance calls he makes (less than 2K). He does ok on his larger jobs (2-15K), is able to mark up and make some money. But when I look at what he charges for these smaller simpler jobs, there's no money in the jobs. Not sure if he is charging enough or invoicing them correctly.

Any advice regarding maintenance calls? Is there a standard minimum charge? Any advice on how to bill customers? Sometimes he sends out an electrician for a few hours and bills a few hundred bucks (materials plus $65 an hour). Once you factor gas, wages, etc...we aren't covering overhead and definitely not making any profit.

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TxElectrician

· #2 · Jun 9, 2014

I charge a service call fee to get to the site. Try and always price and get approval for the job prior to beginning the work, that way you are not disclosing an hourly rate, just a total cost. For trouble shooting, I charge a diagnostic fee - which covers up to 1/2 hour trouble shooting - then hourly after that. Once the problem is found - a price to repair.

You are correct in your thinking that you cannot do 1 -4 hour jobs profitability for $65.00 an hour.

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