How to Price Handyman and Contractor Jobs

what's going on guys it's Travis with handy dandy Dalton just doing a quick video I had a couple people ask me how do i price my jobs and how do i estimate do my estimates and things like that pretty much does the back end stuff so the way it works with doing an estimate a client will call me tell me something like oh I need a drywall repair or something similar and then I have to go take a look at it and then figure out how much to charge the client so that it's fair for them and fair for me so I did write down a couple things that I do your state City Penal Code whatever she could be different you could require more paperwork or less paperwork or whatever but this is kind of gonna be a basic overview I'm not an accountant or lawyer or anything this is not legal advice this is just telling you how I do things so the first thing I had to do when I decided to become a handyman I had to sit down and decide on my rate and after a lot of trial and error I figured out my rate for my area for my skill level and you're gonna have to do the same I'm gonna use round numbers for this demonstration so we're gonna just say you decided your rate is twenty dollars so when you price your jobs twenty dollars is going to be your hourly rate now some jobs are going to be per hour and some jobs are going to be by job so when you have this it's either per job or per task so we'll say per item like drywall repair or something like that and then hourly so like per item let's say you decide to drywall something and you're going to do drywall the mud the texture painting and you decide I'm going to do that per item and then another one is like a honey-do list where they have seven or eight small items tightening a doorknob changing a light stuff like that a light bulb where you know it's not really a per per job thing it's kind of all these little things so then you need to figure out your hourly rate which would be the 20 per hour now how that breaks down is the hourly is at the outset looks easier than the per item because with the per item you have to decide figure out how long it's going to take you and then bill it and then if you go over that you know you're you're essentially under bidding the job hour really is not that great though because some things as you get more skilled you'll finish it quicker like before with my drywall when I first started it took me not exagerating probably four or five times longer than it does now so if I were to do hourly now I would get paid so much less than my skill level would determine so per item or per per hourly so that's the first step is to figure out your your hourly rate and you need to take all kinds of things in consideration your insurance gas wear and tear getting tools like I said this is just a round number now the second thing is when I'm doing an estimate if it's something I've done before great yeah kind of have an idea of it if it's not something I've done before then I watch youtube videos I watch training videos I check out manufacturers for that particular item to see what they say like with cement bags of cement you know digging a post and setting a post for a fence you know the bags will actually tell you how how many bags to use and things like that and that's a good indicator for you to figure out material costs and things so number two would just be research you know if you don't really know how to do it you learn how to do it and things like that that way you kind of get a time frame and that's the most important on this and again please ignore my chicken scratch but time frame let's take the hanging offense post repairing a fence post that's or you know the fence has fallen down because one of the post came out you know doing it watching a video on that several videos on that reading the instruction bag stuff like that that research has me to where I know it's gonna take me about two to three hours to do depending on how bad things are like if I have to take apart the fence you know the panels on each side of the fence so I can get to the post dig it out clean up going to the clients house to do it that roughly is going to take me two to three hours and I've done so many of these and it does take me and again you can do it faster but I'm including going to the clients house going to Home Depot big-box store to pick up materials cleaning up everything so you have to encompass that so now that I have my research and my timeframe two to three hours I know to charge for this one if we were following this example it would be between forty and sixty dollars if we were to follow this if I made forty bucks and then it would be 80 80 to 120 then things like that fifty bucks it would be 100 to 150 so you'll kind of figure out by researching it the timeframe and how much you should charge and that brings me to my third point with this is another good way to figure out pricing and doing estimates and such is online pricing there are websites where you'll type in a handyman or contractor setting a post or fixing a post and they'll actually tell you the price range and they'll give you all these options and most of them I found have been so overblown it's kind of crazy how expensive they are and you can figure but it gives you wiggle room it lets you know that okay well realistically if if you go on and let's say let's take the post for example let's say you were gonna charge the $20 per hour you think it's going to take you ours says sixty bucks you're thinking okay it's gonna cost me I should get paid 60 bucks but then you go online and you see that in your area people are charging 100 dollars for that particular one so then you got to ask yourself okay well what's different between what I'm doing and what they're doing and you can see the all the lines someone these online pricing tools they list out all these crazy things that you would never think of a lot of them are something that you're not going to do so then you can just delete those off and then you'll see where your pricing is let's say in this example for the post you were wanting $60 it says 100 you can see that okay well after viewing the online tools and I forgot a couple things so I think I should actually bill $80 you know the 100 is too high your 60 was too low you settled on 80 because you saw that you have to take to the post and the cement to the dump and that's gonna take you an extra hour or whatever the online tools help you to remember things that you forgot or never thought about or you didn't really realize they're a part of doing that so online tools are a big resource now as for that particular thing with your online pricing your research in your per hour there's also imaginative visualization sounds weird but you you have to imagine yourself doing the job and you have to try to guess them in a really honest timeframe so for digging a post we'll keep using that example to get there to get the materials to get there to the clients house you know yeah I could probably do it in 30 40 minutes but we're gonna say one hour you know just visualizing me going to the big-box store finding the proper materials getting them loaded up loading them in my van driving to the clients house I think an hour is a good visualization and guesstimate I'm taking out the post you know you would think you know digging out a post is going to be super-easy and you know the post is still connected to the cement footer that it's set and then yeah you know you can grab the post and push it out to one side and leverage it out and you know you can get that done in ten minutes maybe or the post could be broken and so now you have to take a pickaxe and a shovel and dig this 100-pound cement footer out you don't know that but before you start digging but you got a price it before you start digging so you almost have to not worst worst-case scenario but you do have to consider visualize and imagine these you know worst-case scenarios you know if I'm going in just to replace a post and the post is broken off from the block I know have to dig that's gonna take at least an hour maybe an hour and a half depending on time of year how hot it is you know just different things like that and you know you may be able to get it done in 30 minutes but I'm not killing myself you know with with working as fast as possible I'm working at a safe pace and a comfortable pace to get it done again fair for client affair for me that's that's the big thing so you know you have to visualize these things and you have to take them into account and clean up you know we're saying three hours here two to three hours for the post idea so when I were to pick up and everything one hour to dig up and everything else and then an hour to you know set the line make sure it's plumb and everything else put the post and dump in the cement dump in the water and then reattach the fences you know that's that's about an hour maybe maybe hour and a half so we could even say that this would be three to four hours so now if you take a look that's closer to this $100 that was on line again rough numbers so then you know four hours would be $80 so maybe when you look at this you originally thought 60 you looked online and they said okay well average is a hundred you come up with eighty but now that you've kind of visualized it you're like you know what I should do this for $100 because what if something happens it takes a little bit longer things like that so these are all key components and like I said you'll hear me say in the video a couple times fair for me and bear for client if you're gouging clients then go do something else be in pharmacy or a lawyer or something but you can make money if you are fair to you and fair to the client and these are steps that I take to do that now the next thing is when you write your estimate you need to write your estimate with limitations and again I'm not a lawyer countenance anything like that or anything this is not legal advice but when I write my estimate like for the post when I write it I write for no more than one post or what have you you know then one post because if you say something like I will fix the fence fix the fence and you get there and you replace the one post and all of a sudden you know you think you're done but there's another post that's broken and sagging if you put I will fix the fence you now have to do twice the amount of work because you didn't put limitations on your estimate so when you write your estimate just write exactly what you're doing don't don't be so general that you you know hit yourself like with the post you know that's an example with drywall I always put the limit of my drywall so if I'm doing a job and there's water damage that had you know been there for years and years and they just want to replace it you know when I write the estimate I always put no more than and let's say you know it looks like the little area that I'm trying to drywall is a 1 foot by 1 foot right but then I get in there and all of the drywall is damaged and so now I have to do you know let's say a 4 foot by 3 foot section well the estimates were this but I wrote I fix the wall well now I have to do all the work of this because I didn't put a limitation of saying no more than 1 foot by 1 foot you know so these are things to think about when pricing your work and when you're putting your estimates out so you know these are the steps I take your first thing you have to do is come up with your hourly rate you know and at first you should be low and you shouldn't be taking big jobs and you should be doing small jobs and you really should be within the limitations of your state local laws and all that stuff with your your your hourly rate you then have to decide per item or you know hourly at first you may think oh it's great to do hourly but that's not the case hourly I feel is more for honey-do lists and lists that are just inconsequential things I would never do an hourly rate for anything over you know $100 or $200 or something like that because you know though they'll toss in weird stuff we're like you know can you replace out this chandelier or you know can you fix the fascia board you know it's a little rotten and you think oh okay well it's an hourly thing and it takes you six hours to do the fascia board or you know again exaggerated numbers but they're not going to want to pay that you know so you have to I would stick to per item and then I would do my research and online pricing and visualize it the other thing is with the pricing when you determine your price you need a minimum [Music] to even show up for work not to go do a free estimate or whatever but you need to decide a minimum so if someone wants to do to come out and change their light bulbs you know that's gonna take you 20 minutes you're not gonna charge them you know ten fifteen dollars or whatever you need to figure out your minimum so two-hour minimum or something like that I I do like a one and a half hour pricing minimum for mine and that's that's to do any work and for me so far that's worked and I'm actually thinking about upping my minimum but to each their own but this was a went on a little bit longer than I expected I these these steps are steps that I wish I had seen when I really got started in it because it was kind of very difficult to to figure out and everything else but I will tell you you know you once you figure out your minimum your hourly rate your minimum you know you start researching and as you get experience you know you're still going to underbid on things but you know the online pricing and the research they'll give you a better idea and visualizing and the other thing with visualizing incorporate cleanup time into it if it's a very small job you know cleanup time maybe thirty minutes if it's you know a couple hundred dollar job cleanup time maybe 45 minutes - now we're depending on what you're doing especially with painting and drywall but that needs to be included because you're doing work even though you're cleaning up your mess that messes because you're doing the work so be sure to do that all right guys well long video sorry but that's my little step plan for pricing out jobs

Channel: Handy Dandy Dalton

Views: 176,864

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Id: LCqCGq_6WI4

Length: 16min 56sec (1016 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 15 2018