What is the core idea behind the shopping list pricing system?
Instead of charging hourly rate plus materials, you charge a fixed price per item. A power socket outlet has one price, a light fitting has another, a smoke alarm has another. The customer approves those line items before work starts, and how long the job actually takes becomes irrelevant to the invoice.
Because the customer sees item prices rather than an hourly rate, they have no way to work backwards and calculate what you earned per hour. Once a quote is approved, it is approved. As Greg puts it: "It doesn't matter how long it takes you. They might come back after and go, what a fuck, I'm just working that out. But he's got no ground to stand on. He's approved the quote."
How do you get above 100% efficiency on each item?
You price every item as if a slow, average worker is doing it. If a standard installation takes 60 minutes for an average person, you allow 60 minutes in your pricing. When you do the same job in 30 minutes, you have effectively earned double your base hourly rate on that item.
If your labour rate is built around $120 per hour and you complete a 60-minute priced item in 30 minutes, you are getting $240 per hour for that item. Greg describes this as 200% efficiency. The system rewards you for being good at your trade rather than penalising you for it, which is the opposite of hourly rate billing.
The same logic applies when you hire staff. Price items based on an average worker so that even when an employee is slower than you, they can still hit 100% efficiency. When they get faster, the margin improves.
How should you handle materials in the item price?
Build materials at a worst-case quantity for every item. If a standard power point install rarely needs more than three metres of cable, price it with ten metres. Most of the time you will use far less, which means you are ahead on materials across that item.
This approach removes the need to track every length of cable or every fitting used on a job. Tracking materials per job is an unbillable activity. Getting your electrician or plumber to sit at the end of a day finding items in a catalogue and logging exact quantities costs you time you cannot charge for. By building a generous worst-case allowance into each item upfront, the wins on the items where you use less will outweigh the occasional item where your estimate was tight.
How do you handle customers who try to calculate your hourly rate from the invoice?
Stand your ground. The response is simple: every item is priced per item, not per hour. The price includes the labour, the materials, the cleanup, the warranty, and any callback if required. You do not need to justify how long the job took.
If a customer pushes hard, you can acknowledge them without discounting your value. Greg suggests that if you know you have strong margin on a particular job, offering a small goodwill reduction, framed as a loyalty or member discount, can satisfy someone who just wants to feel they got something. The key is that you are choosing to offer it, not collapsing because they questioned your rate.
Quoting before the work starts removes most of this friction entirely. When a customer has approved $56.80 times 15 downlights, arguing afterwards that it took two hours instead of four has no basis.
How do apprentices and staff fit into the system?
An apprentice does not get a separate line item in the pricing. The benefit of having an apprentice on site shows up through speed, not through a separate charge. Greg treats a third or fourth year apprentice as contributing 50% of a tradesperson's output.
So a 60-minute item priced for an average person should take around 45 minutes when a tradesperson and apprentice work together. That reduction in time increases the effective hourly rate earned on that item. The pricing stays the same; the efficiency goes up.
For simplicity, Greg recommends keeping item time allowances straightforward. In his business, most replacements sit around 20 minutes, most standard installs around 60 minutes, and more involved jobs like ceiling fans around 90 minutes. Simple time bands make it easy for any staff member to price something they have not seen before.
How do you transition existing hourly-rate customers across to item pricing?
The honest answer is that some existing customers will resist the change and some will not be worth keeping. Focus first on new customers, price them at the full item rate, and let the experience of invoicing those jobs at a strong effective hourly rate give you the confidence to hold your ground with legacy customers.
For customers who question the change, explaining that every job now has a consistent, transparent per-item price, with no surprises at the end, often lands better than you expect. For the ones who are genuinely difficult, the 80/20 rule applies: 80% of your problems come from 20% of your most difficult customers. Removing those customers frees up time to replace them with ones who value your work.
