The quote, built from cost.
Materials, labor, equipment, overhead, and profit: cost-plus math that catches the quiet costs usually noticed after the check clears.
Direct costs
Parts and supplies, at your cost.
From the hourly-rate calculator, ideally.
The job’s share of the iron that got it done.
The rest of the price
Applied to all direct costs.
Applied after overhead: cost-plus.
The quote
$1,794
Direct costs, plus overhead, plus profit. The effective margin below is the share of this price you actually keep.
- Labor$900
- Direct costs$1,300
- Overhead$195
- Profit$299
- Effective margin16.7%
Your inputs, your arithmetic. The dials are yours.
Read carefully
The math is easy. The assumptions are the work.
Overhead rides every job
Rent, insurance, the office, and the software do not bill customers directly. Every job carries a share. Price without it and the busiest month can still lose money.
Markup is not margin
Twenty percent added to cost is not twenty percent of the price. The card shows the effective margin so the number you quote and the number you keep stop being confused for each other.
Leave a buffer
The part that fails on the way out, the second trip, the hour the wall did not give up easily. A five to ten percent buffer on direct costs is cheaper than eating it.
The quote should survive the job
Pricing math only helps if it follows the work through approval, dispatch, and the invoice. A quote that lives in a spreadsheet dies on the way to the truck.
Start
Quote it right. Keep it connected.
On the record, the estimate becomes the job, the job becomes the invoice, and the price you built here is the price that gets collected in the driveway.
Coming from a suite? We’ll extract your records.
Rather talk first? Email the team.