Start with your day rate
Every way of pricing a job comes back to one number: what a day of your time has to bring in. It has to cover what you want to take home, the tax and National Insurance on it, and what the business costs to run, spread over the days you can really work.
The day rate calculator works it out. In its made-up example, a sole trader who wants to take home £35,000 a year, with £10,500 of business costs and 230 working days, needs £232.09 a day. The examples below use that figure.
Three ways to turn it into a price
1. By time
Work out how many days or hours the job will take, times your rate, plus materials. It suits jobs you can't measure in units, like repairs, fault-finding and small odd jobs. Be honest about the time: count setting up, clearing away and fetching materials, not just the work itself.
2. By the unit
Price per square metre, per metre, per room, per window or per point. Work out how many units you do in a normal day, then divide your day rate by it. If you lay 12 m² of tiles in a day, £232.09 ÷ 12 = £19.34 per m² for labour. Unit prices are quick to quote and easy for customers to compare, but check them against the time on awkward jobs: a small room with lots of cuts takes longer per metre.
3. By the visit, for repeat work
Window cleaning, gardening and other rounds are priced per visit. Count how many visits you fit in a day, including the driving between them. At 18 houses a day, each needs to bring in £232.09 ÷ 18 = £12.89 on average to reach the same day rate. Bigger houses pay for smaller ones, but the day's total is what counts.
A worked example
A made-up job: tiling a bathroom, with the figures made up too.
| Line | Working | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Labour | 2.5 days × £232.09 | £580.23 |
| Tiles, adhesive and grout | £380 at cost, plus 10% for ordering, collecting and breakages | £418.00 |
| Taking away the old tiles | Tip charge | £40.00 |
| Total | £1,038.23 |
You might send it as £1,040, with the lines shown so the customer can see where the money goes. Whether you add anything to materials, and how much, is your choice; what matters is that the time you spend buying and collecting them is paid for somewhere. The markup calculator works out a materials price from a markup or a margin.
What gets left out of prices
- Travel: the time and fuel to get there and back, and to the merchant.
- Waste: skips, tip charges and the trips to take it away.
- Access: scaffold, towers, ladders that need two people, parking charges.
- Consumables: sealant, fixings, blades, sheets, cleaning products.
- Making good: filling, patching and cleaning up after the main work. Say whether it's included.
- Paperwork: certificates, testing and photos the customer or a regulator needs.
- Small jobs: a 20-minute job still costs the travel and setting up. Many trades set a minimum charge, like an hour or half a day, and say so up front.
When you can't be sure
Some jobs hide things until you start: rot under a floor, a roof worse than it looked, old wiring. Padding every price to cover what might happen loses you the jobs where it doesn't. It's usually better to price what you can see and say in writing what isn't included and how extra work will be charged, like "any rotten joists found will be replaced at £X each, agreed with you first".
If you can't give a firm price at all, call it an estimate, not a quote, and explain what could change it.
VAT
If you're VAT registered, add VAT to your price. Homeowners can't claim it back, so they compare the total they'll pay, VAT included: show it clearly. If you're not registered, you don't add VAT, but you must register once your takings go over £90,000 in any 12 months.
Is your price right?
- If nearly every quote is accepted, you may be cheaper than you need to be.
- If hardly any are, check how quickly you reply and how clear the quote is before you drop the price. A quote sent the same day, with lines that explain the work, often wins over a cheaper one sent a week later.
- Look back at finished jobs. Did they take the time you priced? Adjust the next one.
- Review your rate every year. Fuel, insurance and materials go up; give regular customers notice before your prices do. How to tell them.
Send the price the same day
Once you've priced it, the free job quote template sets it out line by line, with a deposit if you take one. In Knockround, the quote goes from your phone by WhatsApp, text, email or a link; the customer taps Accept and the job moves to Booked. When it's done, the invoice has a Pay button for Apple Pay, Google Pay or card.
Try it on the jobs board demo, with made-up customers. It's free for 7 days with no card needed, then £19.99 a month.
Written by the Knockround team. The figures in the examples are made up; work out your own with the day rate calculator.