How To Do A Quote For A Job – Pricing jobs is not an easy thing for any contractor, whether you are a gardener, lawn mower, painter, builder, cleaner, or whatever.

How To Quote A Job

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The dilemma for most contractors is Quoting by Fixed price versus Quoting by your hourly rate. We have covered this in detail at How To Prepare Winning Quotes For Your Lawn Mowing and Gardening Business

Personally, I am a real big fan of Fixed Price Quoting.

By Fixed Price Quoting, I mean you are putting together a Fixed Price quote for a number of tasks that need to be completed for the homeowner or property manager you are pricing the job for.

However, for many contractors, the temptation is always there to offer the customer an alternative to the fixed price quote. The alternative is to do the job on a “do and charge” basis or a “cost plus” basis.

The “do and charge” job is where you show up to the job, do the work, add up the hours and bill the customer for hour worked times the hourly rate. My biggest problem with this is you are leaving money on the table and doing yourself out of some serious cash!

A couple of years ago I had to get some “handyman” work done. I got a quote from Hire-A-Hubby Handyman services – see http://www.hireahubby.com.au/.  Anyway for the list of a dozen things that needed repairing etc they gave me a Fixed Price Quote of around $1,000. Mmm, I was on to them when I asked the contractor if he worked on an hourly rate, and he replied, “No, we only offer a fixed price quote!”. I thanked him for the quote and said I will get back to him.

I then called a handyman from the school our kids go to, he said he could do the range of jobs on an hourly rate at $50 per hour. I said go ahead. His bill came to something like $600.

Enough said!

Another company that does justice to the Fixed Price quoting theme is a very successful Sydney plumbing company called Omega Plumbing – see http://www.omegaplumbing.com.au/

No doubt you would be right in saying who I don’t get in to fix my plumbing problems! In fact I get a young plumbing apprentice to fix my plumbing problems, he gets a great hourly rate (for an apprentice) and I pay a reasonable amount.

How To Do A Quote For A Job …