How to Price a Job as a Tradesman Without Underselling
Work out your true day rate, mark up materials properly and quote with confidence, a pricing guide that stops money leaking off every job.
- Most underpricing is a maths problem, not generosity.
- Work out your true day rate first, then check every quote against it.
- Mark up materials, and price emergency work at a premium.
Why Most Tradesmen Underprice
This guide is for UK tradesmen who want to quote properly and stop underselling their time. Most underpricing is not greed-avoidance. It is a maths problem. Tradesmen quote against a labour rate in their head ("I'm worth £25 an hour") without accounting for the unbillable hours, overheads and downtime that the rate has to actually cover. The result is a healthy-looking day rate that leaves very little once the year is totted up.
Work Out Your True Day Rate First
Before you quote a single job, you need to know what one of your working days actually has to earn. Start with the income you want to take home, add every cost of running the business, van and fuel, tools and replacements, insurance, phone, accountant, materials wastage, certification and training, then divide by the number of days you can realistically bill in a year.
Once you know your true day rate, every quote is a sanity check against it: does this job, at this price, cover my day rate for the time it takes? If not, the price is wrong, not the job.
Marking Up Materials Correctly
Materials are not a pass-through cost. You carry the cash-flow risk, the collection time, the wastage and the warranty. A markup of 10-20% on materials is standard and entirely fair. You are being paid for sourcing, financing and guaranteeing them. Quoting materials at trade cost with no markup is quietly giving away margin on every job.
Day Rate vs Priced Work
Day rates protect you on jobs with unknowns, old properties, fault-finding, anything you cannot fully scope up front. Priced (fixed) work rewards you when you are fast and efficient, because you keep the upside. As a rule: price the work you can scope confidently, day-rate the work you can't. Never fixed-price a job full of unknowns to win it, that is where tradesmen lose money.
Pricing Emergency Work
Emergency callouts are a different pricing exercise entirely. The customer has an active problem and is not collecting three quotes. They want someone competent, now. That justifies a callout charge and a premium hourly rate, especially out of hours. Pricing emergency work like planned work leaves significant money on the table. Our breakdown of emergency callout costs covers typical UK ranges.
Quote With Confidence
A clear, itemised, promptly delivered quote wins more work than a low one. Customers read a fast, professional quote as a signal of a reliable tradesperson. Break out labour, materials and any callout charge, put a sensible validity window on it, and send it the same day where you can. If you are regularly losing quotes purely on price, you may be quoting the wrong customers, not pricing too high.
Where Pricing Power Comes From
You can only hold your prices if you are not desperate for the next job. The tradesmen who quote confidently are the ones with a full enough diary to walk away from underpriced work. That is the real reason a reliable inbound stream of customers matters: it is not just more work, it is the ability to charge what you are worth.
Pay-per-job helps here because it adds genuine emergency calls, the highest-margin work, without a monthly fee or any cost on jobs you don't win. You set your own rate on every call; GetTheCall simply puts the customer through. Availability for roofing, plumbing, electrical and heating.
Emergency trade callouts across the UK
GetTheCall routes homeowner emergency calls to tradespeople in London, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, Bristol, Sheffield, Edinburgh, Liverpool, Nottingham and Glasgow, plus 85+ other UK cities.